Giuseppe Cavalli: Master of Light
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London, UK
18th April to 17th June, 2012
Italy spawned great film directors, the names of whom: Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci, Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, Franco Zeffirelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sergio Leone and Roberto Benigni, spring effortlessly to mind. But, try to to conjure up a list of the Italy’s great photographers to put alongside French, American, German and English ones, as well as the odd Brazilian and Japanese and it’s a different story.
Wikipedia lists 92 Italian photographers, the majority of whom I’ve never heard of with the exceptions of Romano Cagnoni, the reportage photographer, still life photographer Piero Gemelli, fashion photographer Marco Glaviano and the only ones I regard as worthy of being called great: Paolo Roversi, Oliviero Toscani and Gian Paolo Barbieri. The Magnum photographer, Ferdinando Scianna, isn’t on the list, nor does it mention the great eccentric architect and furniture designer, Carlo Mollino, who produced some interesting photographic images. For the record: Mario Testino isn’t Italian and was born in Lima, Peru into a family of Irish, Spanish and Italian origins. There’s also the prominent fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti, I suppose, who is based in New York but Italian-born and has certainly produces interesting work for many up-scale clients – but can he be ranked as as great?
In it’s modest way and while the name of the photographer, who is the subject of its current exhibition, Giuseppe Cavalli (1904-1961), is entirely new to me, North London’s Estorick Collection is to be applauded for making a tremendous effort to draw elements of Italian photography out of the darkness and into the light. In this context, who better to choose than Cavalli, evidently one of Italy’s key figures in 20th century photography, who chose light, over content, as the subject of his simple, thoughtful, occasionally almost abstract compositions. Born into a family of artists but opting to study law at Rome University – after which he practised for nine years as a lawyer – from 1935 he worked as a freelance photographer in the pleasant seaside town and port, Senigallia, on Italy’s Adriatic coast, north of Ancona, in the Marche region. Founding member of what are regarded as three of the country’s most influential photographic groups, Giuseppe Cavalli was the recipient of numerous international awards for his work, the constant gentle theme of which developed out of a reaction against the overblown imagery of Fascist era Italy. In the post war years, in marked contrast to the neo-realist aesthetic of directors such as Robert Rossellini that began to dominate Italian cinema and engaged with social and political themes, Cavalli and his companions rejected the perception of photography as a documentary tool in favour of their belief that the medium was an art form. All well and good but when set against those of his international, contemporary and accepted greats, for example: Brassai, Kertész and Man Ray, for me, Cavalli’s pallid prints, pale that little bit further.
Photographs from top
Untitled, undated
Gelatin silver print
35.2 x 28 cm
Composition, undated
Gelatin silver print
20.2 x 17.2 cm
The Little Ball, 1949
Gelatin silver print
30 x 24 cm
Waiting, 1948
Gelatin silver print
17.6 x 28.6 cm
The Black Pipe, 1951
Gelatin silver print
24 x 18 cm
All photographs by Giuseppe Cavalli (1904-1961) from the Prelz Oltramonti Collection, London
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