contessanally: Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore – Fondazione Giorgio Cini

Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore - Fondazione Giorgio Cini

Le Stanze della Fotografia

Ugo Mulas. The Photographic Operation

Inaugural Opening

A stone's throw from the Piazza San Marco on the magical island of San Giorgio Maggiore, which boasts not only a Palladian Basilica and cloister, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Le Stanze del Vetro and during this year's International Architectural Biennale the Pavilion of The Holy See - And Now - the new photographic exhibition and research center Le Stanze della Fotografia - formerly La Casa dei Tre Oci on the Isola della Giudecca in Venice - a joint venture between Marsilio Arte and Fondazione Giorgio Cini. The inaugural exhibition - Ugo Mulas. The Photographic Operation - until August 6 - has been realized with Archivio Mulas - and curated by Denis Curtis, the Stanze's artistic director and Alberto Salvadori, director of the Mulas Archives.

The exhibition coincides with the 50th anniversary of the photographer's death. More than 300 images, including 30 photographs never displayed are on show together with documents, books, publications and films, which offer a summary that opens up to the different experiences faced by Ugo Mulas (Pozzolengo-1928-Milano1973) a photographer transversal to all the then pre-established genres and capable of investigating different themes, always seeking the depth of - Human Quantity. The exhibition winds it way through 14 sections in all his fields of interest. From theater to fashion, portraits of friends and personalities - from literature, cinema, Art and architecture, and from landscapes and cities to his experiences with the Venice Biennale and with artists of the Pop Art movement.

The Curators

Denis Curtis and Alberto Salvadori

Self-Portrait with Nini. For Melina and Valentina - 1972

For Marcel Duchamp - 1970

"A series from the first years of my activity, taken at the

Bar Jamaica

and I, think that it establishes an important moment from those years.

Friends and artists in that place who met and created a subtle plot,

where I found myself thinking and working more and more

as time passed."

Mulas was among the most import figures in post-WWII international photography, as self-taught he soon understood that being a photographer meant providing a critical testimony of society, and it was precisely this awareness that guided his first reportage between 1953-1954: the Milanese periphery and the artistic and cultural environment of the famous Bar Jamaica in the early 1950s. Mulas quickly established himself in the various spheres of photography, from fashion to advertising, publishing in numerous magazine such as Settimo Giorno, Rivista Pirelli, Domus and Vogue.

Lina Mainini, Alfa Castaldi, Arturo Carmassi and Cesare Peverelli

Bar Jamaica - Milano - 1953-1954

Giovanni Bazoli, Emanuela Bassetti, Michele Bugliesi

Renato Brunetta

In the summer of 1964, U.S. Pop Art was introduced to the European public at the Venice Biennale where Mulas obtained the collaboration of critic Alan Solomon and the support of art dealer Leo Castelli, who introduced him into the artistic panorama during his first trip to the United States. He was thus able to portray important painters at work, including Frank Stella, Lichenstein, Johns and Rauschenberg, and important figures such as Andy Warhol and John Cage. The collaboration with the Americans was to continue in 1965 and subsequently in 1967, the year which he presented his analysis of work with the artists, publishing the famous volume New York: Art and People.

New York - 1964

Luca De Michelis

The New York Period - 1964 - Artists and Artist's Studios

Alexander Calder - 1971 - Renato Guttuso - 1961 - Giorgio de Chirico -1968

Emilio Vedova - 1962 - Arnaldo Pomodoro -1970 - Mario Schifano -1966

"In 1970 I began taking a series of photographs the subject of which

was photography itself, an attempt at an analysis of the

photographic process in order to identify its underlying elements and their intrinsic value...I called the series of photographs

Verifications, because the goal was to help me understand the meaning of the processes that for years

I had repeated one hundred times a day, without ever stopping to consider them as things in themselves, stripped of their practical function."

Le Verifiche - The Verifications - 1962-1972, are a series of 13 photographic works through which Mulas discusses photography itself, devoted to the formal and conceptual analysis of the photograph. The title of the Venetian exhibition - Ugo Mulas. The Photographic Operation - draws inspiration precisely from one of the Verifiche and condenses the photographer's extraordinary reflections.

A Lab. One Hand Develops, the Other Fixes.

For John Frederick William Herschel - 1970-1972