Gagosian Gallery Paris is pleased to present an exhibition of Richard Avedon’s portraits of writers, first executed in between the 1950’s and the 1970’s and presented in the Project Space. This exhibition follows the announcement of Gagosian Gallery’s exclusive worldwide representation of Richard Avedon, and the presentation of artist portraits in New York earlier in the year.
During a career that spanned nearly sixty years, Richard Avedon defined and expanded concepts of art and culture in twentieth century photography while producing an extended meditation on life, death, beauty, class, race, and identity. His reportage, portrait and commercial work dissolved the lines between photography’s many perceived genres, as it ranged across a breadth of subject matter including fashion, the American Civil Rights movement, war protestors, the fall of the Berlin wall, and portraits of the famous and the anonymous.
Larry Gagosian comments “Avedon is America’s consummate modern photographer and one of the iconic artists from a generation which produced many extraordinary painters, sculptors, and photographers. We consider it a great privilege to represent one of the true masters of twentieth century art.”
Richard Avedon established The Richard Avedon Foundation during his lifetime. The Foundation is the repository for Avedon’s photographs, negatives, publications, papers, and archival materials. Paul Roth, the Executive Director of The Richard Avedon Foundation, comments, “We are delighted to work with Gagosian Gallery around the world. We think that Avedon will receive outstanding representation in the company of the many modern and contemporary masters exhibited here.”
Richard Avedon (1923–2004) is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Born in New York City, Avedon began his professional photographic career in 1942 in the U.S. Merchant Marine Photographic Department, and attended the Design Laboratory at the New School. He began work as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar in 1945, eventually joining rival Vogue magazine, where he would remain on staff until 1990. In 1992 he was named the first staff photographer for The New Yorker. He received a Master of Photography Award from the International Century for Photography and his work is included in the collections of MoMa, the Smithsonian, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with countless other museums and institutions worldwide. Avedon’s portraits were the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2002. A major 2007 retrospective exhibition organized by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark traveled to Milan, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and San Francisco.
