With memory and passion. From Capa to Ghirri. Masterpieces from the Bertero Collection is the title of the exhibition open until 30 August 2020, CAMERA – Italian Center for Photography.
Among the more than two thousand images that make up the collection, the curators have chosen more than two hundred, created by about fifty authors from all over the world: among the many, the names of Bruno Barbey, Gabriele Basilico, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Robert Capa , Lisetta Carmi, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Mario Cattaneo, Carla Cerati, Mario Cresci, Mario De Biasi, Mario Dondero, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Luigi Ghirri, Mario Giacomelli, Jan Groover, Mimmo Jodice, William Klein, Herbert List, Duane Michals, Ugo Mulas, Ruth Orkin, Federico Patellani, Ferdinando Scianna, Franco Vimercati and Michele Zaza.
Curated by Walter Guadagnini, director of CAMERA, with the collaboration of Barbara Bergaglio and Monica Poggi, the exhibition recounts our past and the roots of our present, as well as the evolution of Italian and international photography over a whole thirty years.
In the rooms of CAMERA, history becomes the background against which countless stories are developed, which tell us about a country and many countries. The protagonists are peasants, priests, families, noblewomen, soldiers, children and above all the photographers who, with the most disparate accents and languages, have imprinted the memory of these events on film. The masters of Italian and world photography have created a story that was born in Italy which had just been freed from fascism, where, despite the rubble and poverty, the desire to take to the streets, to dance and to use the remote corners of nature is intensely felt to make love instead of hiding from the enemy.
Among the numerous works on display are some of the most recognizable shots of this period, masterpieces that have made the history of international photography such as «The road to Palermo», created by Robert Capa in 1943, «American girl in Italy, Florence» by Ruth Orkin from 1951, and the reportage dedicated to Italy by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1952. There are many works that have decisively marked the evolution of Italian photography, authentic milestones now known throughout the world as «The Italians they turn around» (1954) by Mario De Biasi, where a group of men admire the beauty of Moira Orfei as she strolls through the streets of Milan; the two lovers secluded among the dunes of a Venetian beach, discovered by Gianni Berengo Gardin in 1958; «Palermo, via S. Agostino» (1960) by Enzo Sellerio, which portrays a couple of children carrying two chairs over their heads; the iconic seminarians playing in the snow, portrayed by Mario Giacomelli in 1961; the «Mondo Cocktail» series, created by Carla Cerati in the early XNUMXs during the openings of art galleries and shops in the good Milan.
Although the largest nucleus of the collection consists of photographers of the neorealist period, Bertero's choice was open-minded. In fact, the collection includes stories from subsequent decades that contributed to the birth of a new way of understanding the image, gradually detaching itself from a documentary vocation to gradually become more and more conceptual. Also on display are the famous «Verifiche» (1969-72) by Ugo Mulas, through which the photographer investigated and unhinged some dogmas of photographic language; the fundamental journey that Luigi Ghirri makes in 1973 through the states, deserts, oceans and galaxies leafing through the pages of an atlas; the «Portraits of factories» (1978-80) by Gabriele Basilico, where the changes in the Milanese industrial panorama become a pretext through which to understand the complexity of our age; the millennial Mediterranean culture reinterpreted, between the XNUMXs and XNUMXs, through the expressive power of Mimmo Jodice's images, just to mention some particularly iconic researches of this precious collection.
This exhibition, however, is also – and above all – the story of a collector, Guido Bertero, who has collected around two thousand prints since the end of the 1998s. A collection born almost by chance in Turin, the city where Bertero has always lived, in XNUMX during a visit to Artissima, where the then collector of ancient and contemporary art came across two photographs by the American artist Jan Groover, who decided to buy for daughters. Within a few months, the opportunities for contact with this language multiplied, but it was with a proposal for financing an edition of "Photo Espana" dedicated to Italian Neorealism that the idea of building a real collection took shape. A period of continuous travels throughout the peninsula to get to know and buy the works of dozens of photographers who will soon be exhibited in the first major exhibition in Cagliari, then in Spain, Munich and Winterthur. An experience remembered with enthusiasm despite the many difficulties, mainly due to the will and foresight to find vintage prints in a period in which awareness of the artistic value of the photographic image was still weak. Thanks also to this determination, the collection is today an essential point of reference for the study of post-war Italian photography, so much so that since last year, following an important donation made by Bertero to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a rich selection of his heritage is traveling across the United States in a traveling exhibition on Neorealism that has already involved New York, San Francisco and Reno.
A rich and heterogeneous collection, born from a personal passion that is exhibited on this occasion thanks to Guido Bertero's desire to share his heritage with the public, with a view to extreme openness and the desire to spread knowledge of this language that has always distinguished him.
The exhibition is accompanied by a volume edited by Umberto Allemandi editor introduced by Walter Guadagnini. In addition to the reproduction of more than 250 images, within the volume it will be possible to retrace these events through the dialogue between collector and curator.
The activity of CAMERA is realized thanks to Intesa Sanpaolo, Lavazza, Eni, Reda, in particular the exhibition and cultural programming is supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo.
INFORMATION
CAMERA – Italian Center for Photography
Via delle Rosine 18, 10123 – Turin www.camera.to |camera@camera.to
Cover image: Mario De Biasi, The Italians turn around, Moira Orfei, 1954 © heirs of Mario De Biasi
