Artpil is accepting submissions of Profiles, Articles, and Announcements. With a focus on modern + contemporary arts, Artpil provides stories, event news, exhibition guides and interviews, featuring profiles of artists of all disciplines (more…)
One of the most renowned photographers of the interwar period, Brassaï’s reputation rests on contributions to both commercial and avant-garde photography. His long-time friend, the author Henry Miller, nicknamed him “The Eye of Paris” for his devotion to the city, and he was close to many of its artists. His enduring relationship with Picasso in particular yielded many famous portraits of the artist, as well as important books. His first photo-book, published in 1933 and entitled Paris de Nuit (published in English as Paris After Dark), remains the most famous exploration of the city’s hidden underbelly, and is considered a classic of early street photography. His series of photo-books of Paris graffiti have also been hugely influential.
Born Gyula Halász, in the Transylvanian town of Brassó, he was trained as a painter in Budapest, and then in Berlin. He moved to Paris in 1924 and supported himself as a journalist, writing for publications throughout Europe and the United States (it was in Paris that he changed his name to Brassaï, meaning “from Brassó”). He only turned to photography to document his articles but eventually he became enchanted with the medium. At night he would venture out to capture the city’s deserted streets, its shadowed monuments, and those who only emerged after dark – prostitutes, street cleaners, and rag pickers – many of whom he captured in candid photographs. From 1943-45, when working as a photographer was difficult due to the German occupation, Picasso encouraged him to return to drawing, and later sculpture.
He was also an accomplished writer and painter. But Brassaï’s career as a photographer resumed after the war and continued through the late 1960s; it includes work for periodicals including Harper’s Bazaar, Picture Post, and Surrealist magazines such as Verve and Minotaur. He is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.
Brassaï was the subject of several major exhibitions during his lifetime, and recent retrospectives have included Brassaï: The Soul of Paris at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2000 (toured to the Hayward Gallery, London); and “Brassaï: The Eye of Paris,” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1998 (toured to J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; National Gallery of art, Washington, D.C.). His publications include Le Paris secret des années 30 (1976); Conversations avec Picasso (1964); and, co-authored with Picasso, Graffiti (1960). He was the recipient of several major awards, including the Gold Medal for Photography at the Venice Biennale (1957), the first Grand Prix National de la Photographie (1978), the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (1974), and the Chevalier de l’Order de la Legion d’honneur (1976). His film, Tant qu’il y aura des bêtes won Most Original Film at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.
[from Edwynn Houk Gallery]
Artpil is accepting submissions of Profiles, Articles, and Announcements. With a focus on modern + contemporary arts, Artpil provides stories, event news, exhibition guides and interviews, featuring profiles of artists of all disciplines (more…)
Yoko Ono is one of the most influential artists of our time. Her performances and actions in the 1960s and 1970s have achieved cult status. Some of them will be restaged and exhibited at the Kunsthaus Zürich. (more…)
Anonymous, this is not about any one person or a particular artist. This project is akin to finding fading pages from an anonymous diary and placing them in a time capsule for future generations.
This year, and for the first time, the opening of the Horst exhibition, titled The Act of Breathing, is coinciding with the three-day Horst Arts & Music festival, from April 29 – May 1, 2022. After the festival weekend, the exhibition reopens from May 12 – July 31, 2022. (more…)
Sacha Turchi currently lives and works in Italy and collaborates with various visual and sound artists. The interactions between individual and nature, body and psyche, constitutes the essential matrix of her research. (more…)
Alec Soth’s work is rooted in the distinctly American tradition of ‘on-the-road photography’ developed by Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Stephen Shore. From Huckleberry Finn to Easy Rider there seems to be a uniquely American desire to travel and chronicle the adventures that consequently ensue. (more…)
For over thirty years, Stan Douglas has devoted his work to the investigation of the image; the technologies of their making, their aesthetic languages and their dynamics of power. (more…)
Born on May 1, 1968 in Bordeaux, France, Alain Laboile is a photographer and father of six. In 2004, as he needed to put together a portfolio of his work as a sculptor, he acquired a camera, and thus developed a taste for macrophotography (more…)
Here we are again, this time, rounding out our fourth year with some 3,000 Articles and Profiles in our growing archive and over 2 million visits strong. A very exciting journey it has been, indeed. With our fourth year anniversary Prescription, we continue to move forward. (more…)