Prev / Next

Photographs: ITALIAN ICONS

Wednesday 18 June 2025, 04:00 PM • Milan

18

Virgilio Carnisio

(1938)

Milan, 1960s/1970s

Artist's Resale Right

Estimate

€ 250 - 350

Sold

€ 581

The price includes buyer's premium

Information

Inkjet print, printed later
cm 50 x 39,7 (cm 34,3 x 34,3 picture) | 9.7 x 15.6 in. (13.5 x 13.5 in. picture)
Signed in black ink on the white inferior recto margin
Virgilio Carnisio (Milan 1938) began photographing in the early 1960s and, fearing that a false interpretation of modernity could destroy the classic architecture of his city, he wandered between the centre and the suburbs, documenting in black and white courtyards, railing houses, taverns, neighbourhoods such as Isola and Garibaldi, old shops and artisan workshops with the anthropological and social approach dear to classic reportage. He creates, in particularly accurate exhibitions and books, an articulate survey of Milan to which he combines investigations on Valsesia and the realities of Europe, Asia and America, the destinations of his travels.   

If today the Naviglio is the scene of nightlife, in the 1960s it maintained the memory of an ancient Milan crossed by waterways. Always far from the traps of nostalgia (because the good old days were not so good), Virgilio Carnisio dwells on the simple harmony of the façade of a house reflected on the surface of the canal, but knows how to surprise with the figure of the woman washing clothes leaning against a stone slab, ‘brellin’ in Milanese. The gaze focuses on her, on those ancient gestures that still survive and smell of reality. On 13 January 1985 it was Sunday, at the San Siro stadium the Milan team was playing against Como and the spectators ended up being distracted (not the visitors, who won 2-0) because the snow was whitening the field and would continue to fall for four days, covering the entire city. For a photographer like Carnisio, a thousand possibilities opened to capture spectacular images like this one, which captures from afar the crossing of the pedestrians walking across Piazza del Duomo on the path traced in the snow. The photograph, which alludes to both the new landscape and the industriousness of a city that never stands still, became the cover of the volume Under the Snow of Milan that Carnisio published in the following months. 

Suggested lots

Caricamento lotti suggeriti...