Milton Gendel: a surreal life

Milton Gendel: A Surreal Life traces the work of the American photographer and art critic Milton Gendel (*1918 in New York) from his affiliation with André Breton and the Surrealist exiles in New York in the forties and in China during World War II through his fertile connection to Italy, where he has lived for over sixty years. He documented Sicilian agricultural workers and market scenes and became a vital catalyst for the exchanges between American and Italian art as the Rome correspondent for ART News. His iconic portraits refer to artists such as Alberto Burri, Alexander Calder and Willem de Kooning as well as art world luminaries such as Leo Castelli and Peggy Guggenheim and writers, namely Iris Origo, or Evelyn Waugh. Reasserting Rome as a cosmopolitan cultural laboratory during the post-war period, Gendel reveals affinities to documentary photography with Surrealist roots. Exhibition schedule: Museo Carlo Bilotti, Rome, October 5, 2011-January 8, 2012 American Academy in Rome October 19-November 11, 2011