Fotografis is an outstanding collection, consisting of over 600 photos collected over a decade (1975-1985), a collection that remained untouched, as its founders had planned it. Since 2009, the collection has been on loan at the Museum of Modern Art of Salzburg.The exhibition A century of great photography. The masterpieces of Fotografis Bank Austria-UniCredit Art Collection, on a national preview at Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia, includes 150 photos from this collection, depicting evolution and trends of photography from the second half of the 19th century to the seventies .
It starts with the “pioneers”, such as Nadar, and the first great artists, from Frances Frith to Eadweard Muybridge, Frederick Evans and Julia Margaret Cameron. It goes on with the Pictorialists , a crucial stage in the evolution of the photographic language: this section hosts artists such as Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, František Drtikol. Quite interesting is the so-called modernist or avant-garde photography, which includes works by Eugène Atget, Man Ray, Alexandr Rodčenko, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, André Kertész, August Sander, Walker Evans, authors who managed to shape the collective imagination of the century. Followed by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Margaret Bourke White, Weegee, Elliot Erwitt and lots more, as evidence of the will to put together the many facets of photography. This same idea is used for the postwar period, with artists such as Otto Steinert, Mario Giacomelli, Diane Arbus, ideally closing the boundary between documentary photography and conceptual photography and marking the beginning of a new season.
Promoted and organised by the Museum of Modern Art of Salzburg and the Fondazione Palazzo Magnani of Reggio Emilia, it has been curated by Margit Zuckriegl and Walter Guadagnini.
THE COLLECTION – The Fotografis Bank Austria-UniCredit Art Collectiongives an overview which ranges from the beginning of photography as artistic technique to the 1970s. The earliest photographs included in the collection are by William Henry Fox Talbot, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson and date back to the 1840s. The idea of this collection was conceived by a viennese gallerist, Anna Auer, Werner Mraz and Ivo Staněk, then director of the art collection of the Österreichischer Länderbank. Their project was a bold step away from a commercial point of view as well as from a cultural one, because in the 1970s the fine art photography market was neither clearly defined nor stabilized yet. Indeed, only in the 1990s emerged a more regulated market, that managed to guarantee a steady growth in the values of historical and contemporary photography up to the present collecting world. Fotografis, is an example of the first season of European corporate collecting in the mid-seventies.
EXHIBITION
A century of great photography. The masterpieces of Fotografis Bank Austria-UniCredit Art Collection
Until July 13rd, 2014
Tuesday to Thursday: 10.00-13.00 /16.00-19.00; Friday and Saturday: 10.00-19.00
Palazzo Magnani
Corso Garibaldi 31
42121 Reggio Emilia,
Italy
http://www.fotografiaeuropea.it/
http://www.palazzomagnani.it/
