GIACOMO POZZI-BELLINI. A PHOTOGRAPHER BETWEEN ART AND LIFE

Curated by Carlotta Crosera (Vigevano, 1980), University of Milan (Università degli Studi di Milano)

The work of Giacomo Pozzi-Bellini (1907-1990), a great photographer and documentary filmmaker, was presented through a gallery of his photographic portraits, set to recount a life of friendships and encounters with some of the leading figures in the cultural history of the 20th century, including: Eugenio Montale, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Vittorio De Sica, Emilio Cecchi, Alberto Arbasino, Jean Genet and Jean Renoir. The exhibition included the documentary Il Pianto delle Zitelle (1939), the only testimony of his activity as a director, presented in its original version (without the cuts imposed by fascism), which won him first prize at the Venice Film Festival. To complete the portrait, the great art photos, destined to become the privileged ground of Pozzi-Bellini’s experiments, and the history in images of the association with the critic Giovanni Testori, whose vision of works of art, and of painting in particular, is deeply linked to that of Pozzi-Bellini.