This exhibit presents Herbert List’s multifaceted work, exhibiting his masterpieces and some lesser known work side by side, from enigmatic night shots and surreal and dark compositions to the mediterranean sunlight on the ruins of ancient Greece and the bodies of young men.
Also showing portraits of artists of the 20th century, ending with List celebration of the eternal beauty of life.
This selection of “100 works by Herbert List” (just quoting the sub-title of the exhibit) is a co-production of the Herbert List Estate and Magnum Photos in collaboration with Silvana Editoriale and Fotografia Europea. It sheds some light on the elusive oeuvre of the German photographer. Indeed, he used to work in almost every genre of photography, yet blurring any demarcation line between fields: for example, his architectural shots look like composed still lifes or surreal compositions.
“The outside world is an emanation, in arcane circumstances, of the inner world”: these words of the German poet Novalis inspired List in his need of “grabbing appearances within an instant, during which what is already slowed down is definitely frozen”, the photographer explained. List’s work also refers to close connections with metaphysical and surrealist painting (i.e. photos as visions that are independent from time and space and from the actual meaning of the photographed objects) and German Romanticism (i.e. landscapes characterized as visions with somehow mystical connotations)
Looking back on his career as a photographer, Herbert List used to say that he “aimed but not always succeeded in portraying things so that their underlying meaning would reveal itself”. These transient qualities of capturing a moment , grasping the magic of the situation in passing and its vanishing meaning at that right magical moment characterize his best images. “Such pictures radiate an aura that logic or aesthetics cannot explain”.
Herbert List (1903-1975) studied literature and art history. In the thirties he met Bauhaus and Surrealist artists and soon developed his own visual language of a Magic Realism. With his 1936 departure from Nazi-Germany he had to turn photography, his hobby until then, into a profession. He worked for “Harper’s Bazaar”, but he preferred focusing on his project Fotografia Metafisica composing still lifes, similar to paintings of Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico. Then Greece and Italy were List’s main interest, creating a photo diary of mediterranean life. After the war he met Robert Capa, and decided to work for the photo-cooperative Magnum.
EXHIBITION
Herbert List
The magical in passing
Until 27th July, 2014
Chiostri di San Domenico
via Dante Alighieri 11
42121 Reggio Emilia
Italy
