ART CITES:Paris-Ugo Mulas
Ugo Mulas was a major figure of 20th century Italian photography. Nevertheless, his work remains little known in France. When he arrived in Milan in 1948, Mulas rapidly photographs the city while he frequents its art and literary scenes. The Venice Biennale’s official photographer from 1954, he documents the Italian and American Art Scene, observing novelty and the relationship of artists with their work.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Marian Goodman Gallery Archive
The Librairie Marian Goodman presents an exhibition of portraits by Ugo Mulas highlighting his work as a portraitist of the artistic, literary, and intellectual milieus. Ugo Mulas was born in Pozzolengo, near Desenzano del Garda in Brescia. He completes his classical studies in Desenzano. In 1948 he goes to Milan to begin his studies at the Faculty of Law, but decides not to graduate and take art courses at the Brera Fine Arts Academy. Fascinated by the world of art, Mulas took Photography almost as an accident. His knowledge of photography is totally self-taught. He realized soon that being a photographer means to provide a critical testimony of the society in which one lives, the society after the World War. It is this very sensitivity that guides him to select his first subject, the suburbs of Milan, the Central Station and his friends and artists from the Jamaica Bar in in via Brera, Milan. Throughout Ugo Mulas life, he made portraits of the biggest artists of his generation, such as: Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, and Giorgio Morandi, whose 1962 portrait is featured in the exhibition. Mulas photographed artists most often in their atelier, surrounded by their works, such as the one where Fausto Melotti poses among his metal sculptures. Some portraits show the artists in the creative process, like Alberto Burri laboring over one of his “Combustioni” sculptures, which required the use of fire and a blowtorch. For the photographs of Lucio Fontana while he cut his canvases, in his book, “La Fotografia” (published by Einaudi, Turin, 1973), Mulas said ”It is the moment in which two aspects of his work meet: the forerunning concept, because when Fontana decided to start he already had an idea of his work, and the execution, in which that concept became reality. Perhaps it is due to this focus and conceptual anticipation that Fontana titled his slashed paintings ‘Expectations’”. At the 1964 Venice Biennale,for which during the years 1954 and 1972 he served as the event’s official photographer Mulas met the American Art Critic Alan Solomon, the gallery owner Leo Castelli, and several American Pop Art artists. That same year, Mulas flew to New York to experience first-hand the new avant-garde represented by Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, as well as Roy Lichtenstein, two of whose portraits are on display at the bookshop. The following year, during another visit to the United States, Mulas took portraits of Kenneth Noland in his studio in Vermont and of Jasper Johns at his studio in South Carolina. Mulas also created exceptional documentation of the most important exhibitions of his time, including “Sculture nella città” in Spoleto in 1962 and “Vitalità del negative nell’arte italiana” 1960/70 held at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in 1970. The views of the latter exhibition are a record of the works of the 34 participating artists, reflecting the diversity of contemporary artistic currents. In the room dedicated to the work of Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mulas created an ingenious self-portrait in a mirror. He spent the last years of his life working on a single project he called “Verifiche” which constitutes a veritable study of the photographic medium.
Info: Librairie Marian Goodman, 66 rue du Temple, Paris, Duration: 9/11-22/12/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://mariangoodman.com
