Exhibition in Milan: Palazzo Reale shows Brassaï’s photo

He is one of the masters of French photography. The painter and sculptor remain less known, which would undoubtedly have saddened Brassaï. The man finds himself today at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, or at least in one of its outbuildings. The current retrospective is in fact in Piazza Duomo, on the ground floor, under the Museo del Novecento. A place often considered secondary, where I nevertheless saw excellent things even if they lacked visibility. We should therefore not be surprised if the Brassaï retrospective also remains almost deserted.

A Hungarian from Paris

Gyula Malász was born in 1899 in Brasov, from which he took his pseudonym Brassaï in 1923. The city was then Hungarian, and as such a member of the Empire. She is now in Romania. Like humans, countries travel. The artist’s entire career was nevertheless spent in France. His father came there to teach literature at the Sorbonne in 1904. There was only one trip to Berlin in the 1920s. Cities that gave the impression of movement were always found elsewhere. Of Paris, the photographer mainly showed the dark side, which led in 1933 to the publication of the legendary work “Paris at night”, with its petty criminals, its prostitutes, its bars and its misfits. This realism paradoxically appealed to the surrealists. The attraction of opposites, no doubt. But it should be noted that Brassaï will also be the photographer of graffiti, popular expressions then carved in stone, and not painted on walls. Their raw poetry had its perfect place in a magazine like “Minotaure”.

It is this period that the visitor will find above all on the walls of the Palazzo Reale, even if the artist also later showed a lot of the various workshops of Pablo Picasso. The public will do so almost exclusively with “vintage” prints, which is becoming rare today in a historical exhibition dedicated to the 8th art. Only Brassaï’s icons constitute modern reprints here. It should be noted that the curator of the exhibition is called Philippe Ribeyrolle and that he is Brassaï’s nephew. The latter did not have to resort to any external borrowing. This is a family fund, established as a foundation. A legal entity also holding drawings and small sculptures by the man, some of which are also part of the current retrospective.

This, I remind you, ends more or less with the declaration of war. Subsequent contributions remain insignificant. They often take the form of supplements. The audience will thus find a lost Paris, including that of the brothels closed in 1946. There are also artists, ranging from Samuel Beckett to Leonor Fini via Joan Miró and the then illustrious ladies’ hairdresser Antoine. Plus the famous graffiti. They range from the ancient ones of Pompeii to the cries of the modern street. The whole composes without incoherence a sort of intimate universe, where the unusual has its place like the criminal. A one-person universe. The meeting with Gilberte, who would become Madame Brassaï, only dates back to 1945.

Practical

“Brassaï, L’occhio di Parigi”, piazza Duomo, Milan, until June 2. Such. 0039 02 8846 5230, website https://palazzorealemilano.it Open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Thursday until 10:30 p.m.

Born in 1948, Etienne Dumont studied in Geneva which were of little use to him. Latin, Greek, law. A failed lawyer, he turned to journalism. Most often in the cultural sections, he worked from March 1974 to May 2013 at the “Tribune de Genève”, starting by talking about cinema. Then came fine arts and books. Other than that, as you can see, nothing to report.More informations

Did you find an error? Please report it to us.