The Rome Foundation Museum, Palazzo Cipolla, until 28 September 2014, hosts the works of the great photographer Terry O'Neill with a retrospective entitled “Terry O'Neill. Pop Icons”.
A succession of portraits that tell the artistic career of the British photographer through the faces of the myths of cinema, music, fashion, politics and sport.
O'Neill's work can unexpectedly be compared to that of Andy Warhol obsessed with images and notoriety, whose works are exhibited simultaneously with those of the photographer.
The American artist, father of Pop Art, has been collecting autographs of stars since childhood, foreseeing the spread of image mania.
In his studio, the famous Factory, Warhol gathers around him a large number of artists, writers, musicians and underground figures and the portraits taken with his Polaroid form the basis of his iconic photographic paintings.
Curated by Cristina Carillo de Albornoz, the retrospective dedicated to Terry O'Neill contains some of his most famous works, 47 portraits documenting the most intimate and natural moments of the pop icons of the last 40 years.
"I was lucky. I was in the right place at the right time: London in the 60s. You had the impression that something revolutionary happened every day,” says Terry O'Neill.
Born in London in 1938, he can be defined as one of the most famous photographers of our time who has been able to capture, with extraordinary skill, authentic and spontaneous images of many of the legends of the twentieth century; characters who have marked history becoming real icons. With him politicians, singers and actors find the perfect key to best express their personalities.
He collaborates with important magazines such as Rolling Stone and Vogue, and with other famous colleagues, including David Bailey, Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy.
All authors of those photographs that immortalized the "Swinging London" of those years. His recently rearranged archives reveal his poetic vision of the beauty and myth of the 60s and 70s.
His most beautiful shots are often stolen behind the scenes of film sets and concerts, informal moments in which the subjects could feel free to be themselves.
O'Neill literally becomes part of their lives, spending whole days with them in full harmony with the relaxed and nonchalant atmosphere of the time.
His great skill in managing public relations in relation to the star system together with the ability to be a discreet observer for his subjects, has allowed him to illustrate the success from A to Z. The use of the lightest and most manageable 35mm, a an absolute novelty for the time, it helped him to make his style natural and unmistakable.
Terry O'Neill, whose dream was to become a jazz drummer, began his career in the British Airways photography department at London's Heathrow Airport, where he photographed travelers arriving in the country.
In 1959 he began working for the Daily Sketch magazine. In 1963, for the same periodical, he took the first photograph of the Beatles, in the Abbey Road studios on the occasion of the release of their first album Please Please me, for the first time a musical group appeared on the cover of a British periodical. This photo is followed by many others, from the Rolling Stones to David Bowie and Elton John. In the same period he portrayed the great icons of fashion from Twiggy to Jerry Hall. At 26 he decides to go to Hollywood. His friends, Michael Caine and Richard Burton, opened the doors to the world of cinema for him, thus allowing him to immortalize stars such as Clint Eastwood, Paul Newmann, Sean Connery and Robert Redford.
Living among the legends of the show and having a relationship of great closeness and complicity with them, in his fifty-year career O'Neill created some of the most authentic portraits, from Frank Sinatra (photographed over thirty years) to Elvis Presley, from Elton John to Bono Vox, from Elizabeth Taylor to Audrey Hepburn, from Brigitte Bardot to Ava Gadner up to Marlene Dietrich.
Terry O'Neill and Warhol both stunningly portrayed the same legendary characters such as Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor, to name but a few.
Both have tried to capture and enhance the essence of each of their subjects by expressing their grandeur and consecrating them to timeless icons.
The promoted exhibition is from Rome Foundation, produced and organized by Arthemisia Group and 24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo 24 ORE, offers further evidence of how the cult of celebrity, the leitmotif of the 60s and 70s, greatly influenced the work of the artists of the time
