Prev / Next

Photographs: ITALIAN ICONS

Wednesday 18 June 2025, 04:00 PM • Milan

24

Carla Cerati

(1926)

Forma di Donna, 1972

Artist's Resale Right

Estimate

€ 500 - 800

Sold

€ 1.161

The price includes buyer's premium

Information

Gelatin silver print, printed in 2007 and applied in original cardboard
cm 4,4 x 8,4 (cm 11,8 x 17,5 cardboard) | 1.7 x 3.3 in. (4.6 x 6.9 in. cardboard)
Signed and dated in black ink on the cardboard recto

Literature

Carla Cerati, Forma di Donna, Mazzotta, Milan, 1978, p. 27
Carla Cerati (Bergamo 1926 - Milan 2016) transformed her youthful artistic flair into a passion for photography that led her to make her first professional images of theater and then, in the 1960s, to investigate the world of youth by collaborating with newspapers such as L'Illustrazione Italiana and L'Espresso. Then she documents the theatrical avant-garde (Kantor, Carmelo Bene, the Living Theater) and the protagonists of the cultural world to marry the social commitment that leads her to make important reportages and to sign with Gianni Berengo Gardin the fundamental volume “Morire di classe.” She finally devoted herself to a careful photographic reflection on the female body. Also important was her activity as a writer. 

Between these two images is ideally placed the complicated professional story of Carla Cerati. When, at the end of the 1960s Franco Basaglia began his battle for the closure of mental institutions, real prison that denied dignity to those who were not cured but imprisoned, an important contribution to the success of the law that bears his name was constituted by that small but intense book published by Einaudi in 1969 characterized by the beautiful title Morire di classe that Carla Cerati signed with Gianni Berengo Gardin. The close shot on the faces of people to whom no one gave attention indicates the desire to establish a contact to give them back that dignity every day trampled on. The framing that crosses the subjects gives to the picture a dynamism that seems to indicate hope. When, on the other hand, Carla Cerati begins to question herself about the female body (the volume Corpo di donna will be published by Mazzotta in 1978) what interests her is to investigate forms, to chase lines, to try to sublimate the traditional concept of femininity in a research that becomes almost abstract. Continuing her research she arrives, as in this case, to expertly use the contrasts of black and white to arrive at a seductive harmony.   

Suggested lots

Caricamento lotti suggeriti...