Robert Mapplethorpe - Wilhelm von Gloeden. ' Beauty and Desire ' Duo exhibition at Museo Novecento in Florence

Curated by Sergio Risaliti, director of the Museo Novecento, with Eva Francioli and Muriel Prandato

The Museo Novecento pays homage to one of the 20th-century's greatest photographers, Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989), through an original comparison with the images of German photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931) known for his male nude photographs. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia. Around 50 photographs selected from hundreds of Mapplethorpe’s works are divided into thematic sections, making it possible to focus on Mapplethorpe’s relationship with antiquity and his passion for the masters who preceded him such as Michelangelo Buonarroti. It also explores his sculptural approach to photography, clearly visible in his study of the male and female nude, in addition to his still lifes, where a sculptor’s vision and sensitivity equates bodies with objects. Starting from this focus, a comparison is drawn between Robert Mapplethorpe’s work and a number of photographs dating back to the late 19th and early 20th century from the Alinari Archives.

The exhibition is organised forty years after the exhibition at the Palazzo delle Cento Finestre which made the work of the American photographer known in Florence, and more recently in 2009 the exhibition Robert Mapplethorpe: Perfection in Form at the Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze.