Untitled Document

APRIL SHOWERS is a group exhibition of photographic images featuring one of the greatest wonders of the modern era: the umbrella. The show includes over twenty-four artists active in Italy during the mid-twentieth century.

As a complementary exhibit, MAY FLOWERS features a wide array of botanical photographs by a variety of American and European modernist photographers from the early to mid-twentieth century.

With its simple, exquisitely engineered frame and ingenious spring-loaded apparatus, the mechanical UMBRELLA is perhaps the most under-appreciated and taken-for granted invention of modernity. Inexpensive and disposable, this nearly perfect contrivance provides four-season shelter in rain, sun, and snow. APRIL SHOWERS pays tribute to this versatile, utilitarian, and democratic device with the inspired images of mid-twentieth century Italian photographers.

Since the 1800s (what would the Pointillists and Impressionists have done without it?), the umbrella has inspired romantic mystique. In the Northern regions of Italy, the autumn and winter months bring rain for days on end: when paired with rain-soaked streets of depressed post-war Italy (economically glum, visually rich), the umbrella quickly became an icon of Italian photography. (The very word umbrella comes from the Italian ombrello, a diminutive of ombra or “shade.”)

One standout picture in this exhibition is NINO MIGLIORI’s crisp black and white abstract of a sea of umbrellas. At first blush, this photograph suggests a dense garden of flowers. This 1956 picture is aptly titled “Albino” for the lone white umbrella, cleverly hidden against the black backdrop.

Another exceptional picture is ALESSANDRO BREMBILLA’s pair of clowns dressed as Pierrot (1958). This image—at once funny and sad—catches the two figures sharing an umbrella, sheltering their conical hats from the rain.

CARLO CALIGARIS’ picture of a couple seeking refuge under their umbrella while strolling in the park turned a hallmark moment into a surreal photograph by shifting his tones with a colored lens filter.

The work of this vibrant era and its focus on the human condition reveal that the immense talent of Italian photographers was current with the world photo scene. This exhibition contains wonderful examples of these photographers’ determination to create poignant, powerful, and enduring images—a pleasure to see so many years after they were made.

ANTONIO AMADUZZI	ALBERTO GALDUCCI
ANTONIO BORNACCINI	FRANCO GRIGNANI
ALESSANDRO BREMBILLA	NINO MIGLIORI
GIUSEPPE BRUNO	LUIGI MONACO
CARLO CALIGARIS	MARIO PEROTTI
AUGUSTO CANTAMESSA	AZZI PALMIRO
MARIO CARRIERI	STEFANO ROBINO
PIERO CEPPI	VITTORIO RONCONI
CESARE COLOMBO	MARCO ROSSI
EUGENIO DE LUIGI	BRUNO ROSSO
LUCIANO DE STASIO	ROBERTO TURCHET
GIANNI DELLA VALLE	PIERO VISTALI
MARIO FINOCCHIARO

MAY FLOWERS is a tribute to between-the-wars photographers and their tightly cropped, sensuous floral close-ups—the kind of picture that scandalized painter Georgia O’Keefe and inspired her overly sexualized abstractions of stamens and pistils.

Starkly lit specimens and unorthodox techniques like x-ray photography and photograms (shadowlike photographic images made on paper without the use of a negative or a camera, favored by artists like Man Ray) were employed to produce crisp, eye-catching studies of the flower.

On both sides of the Atlantic, photographers experimented with the flower as a subject to test lighting and lens in trying to one-up the natural beauty of nature creating a permanent representation even more exquisite than God’s short-lived, ephemeral creation.