Mario Giacomelli (1925–2000) was a central figure in Italian visual culture in the second half of the twentieth century, capable of engaging with the major transformations of artistic language. His work occupies a decisive point of transition, between a modernity still marked by realism and the emergence of a postmodern sensibility that dissolves the boundaries between genres and shifts the gaze from documentary objectivity to the subjectivity of experience.
From its very beginnings, his photography moved in a divergent direction, merging documentation with transfiguration, testimony with invention. As Germano Celant wrote, “his images live on the theatricality of reality, yet reveal an overwhelming devotion to inner and subjective vision.”
Edited by the Mario Giacomelli Archive, this volume offers an original and comprehensive perspective on his life and work, conveying the complexity, density, and stratification of an oeuvre that continues to elude any canonical definition. It is the most extensive publication of documentary material ever produced on Mario Giacomelli, the result of the Archive’s valuable work of recovery and sharing on the occasion of the centenary of the artist’s birth. An in-depth biography covering Giacomelli’s entire artistic production, it reveals the complexity and depth of his personality as both artist and man, enriched by documents and excerpts from critical texts, past and present.
Critical essays by Katiuscia Biondi Giacomelli, Rita Giacomelli, Marco Andreani, Irene Caravita, Simone Giacomelli, Livia Russell, Giovanni Nassi, Mauro Zanchi, Elio Grazioli, Francesco Zanot.
- Hardcover
- Language: Italian
- 408 pages
- 850 illustrations
- Dimensions: 24 × 28 cm
- Year: 2025
- ISBN: 9788836660711
