Rome’s Gagosian art gallery hosts the “Richard Avedon Italian Days” photography exhibit, March 14th, 2025

Rome’s central Gagosian art gallery is currently hosting the “Richard Avedon Italian Days” photography exhibit.

Avedon was born in New York in 1923 and died in San Antonio in 2004. He was an American fashion and portrait photogrpaher who had worked for Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and Elle.  Avedon specialized in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance. 

In 1944 he began working as an advertising photographer for a department store.  Two years later he arrived in Rome just after the end of World War II and when Italy was still largely inaccessible to visitors.  He travelled around the country to Rome, Sicily and Venice until 1948.

The twenty-odd photographs that are on display include unique images of Bette Midler, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Samuel Beckett. 

The exhibit which runs until May 17^th, 2025.

“Picasso the Foreigner” exhibit is on at Rome’s Palazzo Cipolla, March 7th, 2025

Rome’s central Palazzo Cipolla is currently hosting the “Picasso the Foreigner” exhibit until June 29^th, 2025.

 
Pablo Picasso (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, 1973) is quite often regarded as the 20^th century’s most significant painter (he only painted about 15,000 paintings).

 
A creator of the “Cubism” art movement, 100 paintings by the Spanish artist are on display in the “Picasso the Foreigner” exhibit (a theme which is very current with countries like the U.S., and many others around the world, who are staunchly against an increase in their immigration quotas).

Picasso is now a national icon in France but it wasn’t always that way as in 1901 he had been labeled as an “anarchist under surveillance” by the French authorities.  He had never become a French citizen as in 1904 his request for naturalisation had been rejected.  And twenty-five years later Paris’s famous Louvre museum had refused to accept Picasso’s donation of his epic painting, “Demoiselles d’Avignon”, which was instead wholeheartedly accepted by New York’s MOMA.