Thanks to photography, Elisabetta Catalano created portraits that captured the souls of artists and the spirit of their works. Although she passed away ten years ago, the images she created continue to remind us of the exceptional art scene and its protagonists in the late 20th century, as demonstrated by the exhibition Elisabetta Catalano. Focus on Artists, on display at MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts, in Rome.
The exhibition presents sixteen vintage and modern prints, recently acquired by MAXXI, which showcase the photographer’s talent for capturing the essence and personality of her subjects. As curator Laura Cherubini points out, “the exhibition demonstrates Elisabetta Catalano’s gift for creating iconic images, a skill that led the most influential creative figures of the time to seek her to immortalise their performances and visions. In each of these portraits, Elisabetta performs a double act. On the one hand, she works to demolish the almost ideological image that each of us has of ourselves, revealing what lies inside each person. At the same time, she demonstrates a profound understanding of the work of each of these artists portrayed.” Laura Cherubini adds: “Elisabetta knew how to confer a very high degree of iconicity. That is why artists sought her out, wanting her to capture their performances and make the ephemeral last.” These portraits of artists, as well as those of writers, film stars and fashion icons, retain their value over time. In other words, she has succeeded in turning cinematic, literary and artistic icons into symbols of an era, while also shaping the visual imagination of contemporary art. Thanks to her profound understanding of the work of the artists she was portraying, Catalano provided a detailed insight into the artistic and cultural avant-garde of the 20th century. She collaborated with conceptual artists such as Vettor Pisani, Fabio Mauri, Sandro Chia and Mimmo Rotella, sharing their creative processes, preparing, documenting performances and taking photographs that would later be considered iconic images of these works. She photographed many of the most important avant-garde artists of the time, including Alighiero Boetti, Joseph Beuys, Gilbert & George and Janis Kounellis. Before her lens also passed Carla Accardi, Alighiero Boetti, Enzo Cucchi, Francesco Clemente, Michelle Coudray, Gino De Dominicis, Luciano Fabro, H.H. Lim, Fabio Mauri, Eliseo Mattiacci, Marisa and Mario Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto with Maria Pioppi, Maurizio Mochetti, Vettor Pisani, Remo Salvadori with Sally Benjamin, Mario Schifano and Lawrence Weiner. Among the images on display at MAXXI (by the way, the building itself is a major architectural work designed by Zaha Hadid), Cherubini says, “Let’s take Lim, for example, poised on a sphere, in a kind of meditative state. Then there’s Gino De Dominicis, haughty, alone, absolute, in the only portrait he authorised in his lifetime, which he sometimes used in his works”.
The works on display form a tableau of the national and international art world from the 1970s to the 2000s. These new acquisitions confirm Elisabetta Catalano’s artistic significance and enrich the body of her work already in the Museum’s collection. Pio Baldi, vice-president of the Archivio Elisabetta Catalano, points out the importance of her historical archive, which he describes as “a fundamental tool because it classifies and preserves her works, communicating their importance and historical significance”.
Elisabetta Catalano recalled that her career began almost by chance when she had a role in the film Fellini’s iconic film 8 1/2, and where she also started taking pictures on the set. Then her research evolved into a thoughtful studio portraiture project, aimed at capturing the intellectual authenticity of her subjects. Among them, to name but a few, were Federico Fellini, Monica Vitti, Irene Papas, Helmut Berger, and writers such as Italo Calvino and Pier Paolo Pasolini. She used to contribute to magazines such as L’Espresso, Il Mondo and Vogue (the Italian, French and US editions). Her images blend psychological introspection with creative vitality, capturing the joy of transforming thought into artistic expression. Her work was more than mere documentation; it was a vision of collaboration with artists such as Fabio Mauri and Michelangelo Pistoletto in the creative process.
Obiettivo sugli Artisti brings official portraits into dialogue with contact sheets from the Archivio Elisabetta Catalano, offering an intimate insight into her working process: a meticulous exploration made up of long exposures, meetings and artistic partnerships. So, the images that now belong to the visual history of the contemporary era emerged.
Paola Sammartano
The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Archivio Elisabetta Catalano.
Elisabetta Catalano. Obiettivo sugli artisti
From November 26, 2025, until March 8, 2026
MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts
Via Guido Reni, 4/A
00196 Rome, Italy
https://www.maxxi.art/en/
https://archivioelisabettacatalano.it/
