Lucien Clergue - Photography 1960/1970 | Until March 21, 2026

5 days ago
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Updated: 14 hours ago

Marina Bastianello Gallery is pleased to present a selection of significant photographs from the 1960s by Lucien Clergue, a master of twentieth-century photography.

Founder of the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie (R.I.P.) in Arles in 1970, Lucien Clergue is one of the world's preeminent photographers. A friend to Picasso and Cocteau, as well as to bullfighters and writers, he left an indelible mark on the history of photography through his work. His photographs are held in the permanent collections of the world’s leading museums - from MoMA in New York to the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris - and in numerous prestigious public and private collections.

The selection on display at the gallery has been conceived as a compact retrospective of the artist’s primary themes: from landscapes to nudes, and from abstract forms to the figurative. The aesthetic curation focuses on vertical formats, which are highly representative of the artist’s style, and a rigorous black and white.

All photographs are signed directly by the artist and were printed under his supervision during the 1970s; each bears a signed sheet on the reverse, drafted by the artist as a certificate of authenticity. This precious exhibition fills a long absence of his work from Italian galleries, bringing a true master of 20th-century art history back to Italy.

"Clearly, the creative impulse prevails over the refinement of black-and-white rendering, the sharpness of detail, or even the precision of the image cropping. Like many photographers of the time, Lucien Clergue worked with a 6x6 camera—a Semflex—moving between the 'atelier' (laboratory) and the 'studio.' ... This refusal to compromise, this determination to answer primarily to his own convictions and aspirations, would continue to assert itself, going hand in hand with another affirmation: the principle of liberty".

Gabriel Bauret, Lucien Clergue, Éditions de la Martinière, 2007