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Photographs: ITALIAN ICONS

Wednesday 18 June 2025, 04:00 PM • Milan

1

Olivo Barbieri

(1954)

Roma, 1987

Artist's Resale Right

Estimate

€ 3.000 - 4.000

Sold

€ 4.257

The price includes buyer's premium

Information

Vintage chromogenic print
cm 57 x 30 (cm 53,5 x 26,5 picture) | 22.4 x 11.8 in. (21 x 10.4 in. picture)
Signed in pencil on the white inferior recto margin

Literature

Notte - Olivo Barbieri, Arti Grafiche Friulane, Pordenone, 1991
Olivo Barbieri (Carpi, Modena 1954) approached photography in the early 1970s in Bologna, where he attended the extraordinary hotbed of talent that was DAMS. Fascinated by the artificial lights that illuminate the night in urban centers, he used them for his first works with which he introduced himself to Luigi Ghirri who in 1984 included him, the youngest among the participants, in the great project “Viaggio in Italia.” In the 1990s he travels to the East and particularly to China, developing a different style: landscapes and architecture are made with aerial shots and a selective focus that highlights only certain levels. He establishes himself internationally with exhibitions - from the Venice Biennale to the New York Triennial - catalogs and videos. 

The pictures offered here are particularly significant examples of the two chronologically successive ways in which the Emilian photographer has approached the theme of the urban landscape. In the first one he investigates the charm of Rome but does so avoiding the most predictable visions: he lurks in the night in search of a seductive theatricality because the foreground that occupies the lower and right part of the image acts as a backdrop to give depth to the vision and make the soaring Pyramid stand out better against the background of a dark sky on which the moon glances. In the second everything has changed just as has happened to China where the bicycles of the 1960s have been replaced by cars, while the roads now defy modernity by creating paths that rise and fall as in roller coaster. The helicopter shot and the idea of blurring the definition toward the distant horizon create an effect of miniaturization of the landscape, however, questioned by the generous size of the print.   

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