Milan, at the Diocesan Museum a major exhibition on Robert Capa with more than 300 photographs

From May 14 to October 13, 2024, the Museo Diocesano in Milan presents Robert Capa. The Work 1932-1954, a retrospective curated by Gabriel Bauret, promoted by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo and produced by Silvana Editoriale, realized thanks to the support of main sponsor Dils a leading real estate company, which traces the main stages of the war photographer’s career, from his beginnings in 1932 until his death in 1954 in Indochina from a landmine explosion. The exhibition consists of 300 works, selected from the archives of the Magnum Photos Agency. The project aims to emphasize the humanist dimension of Robert Capa (Budapest, 1913 - Thai Binh, 1954), the other angles toward which he directs his lens: the populations affected by conflicts, children, women. In “weak times,” personal stories emerge from universal history, and the individual is manifested in all his humanity.

The exhibition is thus divided into 9 thematic sections - Early Photographs, 1932-1935; The Hope for a More Just Society, 1936; Spain: Civic Engagement, 1936-1939; China Under Fire from Japan, 1938; Side by Side with American Soldiers, 1943-1945; Toward a Newfound Peace, 1944-1954; Travels East, 1947-1948; Israel the Promised Land, 1948-1950; Return to Asia: a War That Is Not His Own, 1954 - which evoke the chronological approach with which his reportages were published in the French and American press of the time. Thus, along the exhibition path are dramatic images such as Death of a Loyalist Militiaman, Front of Cordoba, Spain, early September 1936, which for the first time, together with shots by other professional photographers sent to the front lines and bombed cities, document a war in a modern sense; but also photographs capturing the leisure moments of the Tour de France, July 1939, symbolic of a life striving to flow despite the specter of battle; the aftermath of World War II emerges in snapshots of death and resilience as in A Catholic Priest Celebrates Mass on the Beach at Omaha, France, Normandy, June 1944, where we see the liturgy unfold in an extreme context. In the same years, miles away, Capa documents the Allied ascent of Italy and unearths of the unexpected irony of a Sicilian Peasant telling an American officer about the direction the Germans had taken, near Troina, Italy, in August 1943 ; at the same time the jubilant exaltation of Russian and American soldiers, reveling together in Berlin celebrating the end of the War(American soldiers, part of the Allied occupation forces, at a multinational party, Berlin, Germany, 1945), is only a glimpse of peace in a world in conflict; so the silent, anonymous suffering of A Man and a Woman Carry Their Possessions in Sacks, Haifa, Israel, 1949 reminds us how every day the world is plagued by tragedies that humanity-now so small, now invincible-is called upon to face. Many of the photographs thus refer back to the man more than to the photographer, to Ernö Friedmann (his first name) more than to Robert Capa. Along with the photographs, a series of documents, publications, a film and a sound recording are on display in the exhibition, allowing us to dispel the mythological aura by which his figure is shrouded and trace the contours of a life whose outcome did not escape tragedy. Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog published by Silvana Editoriale, edited by Gabriel Bauret himself, with texts by the curator and Michel Lefebvre.

“For me, Capa wore the light suit of a great bullfighter, but he did not kill; as a good player, he fought generously for himself and others in a whirlwind. As fate would have it, he was struck down at the height of his glory,” so wrote Henri Cartier-Bresson of Capa.

“If war photographs shape Capa’s legend, in his reportages we also see him looking at reality from different points of view, focusing on what photographer Raymond Depardon called ’weak times,’ as opposed to the strong times that usually mobilize the attention of journalists and require them to be first and closest,” says the curator.

Notes on the artist

Robert Capa was born in Budapest on October 22, 1913, as Endre Friedmann. In 1932, he went to Berlin where he was hired at Dephot, a well-known photo agency. In the same year he published his first reportage on Leon Trotsky. In 1933, after Hitler came to power, he fled Berlin for Paris, where he met André Kertész, David Seymour (or Szymin, aka “Chim”) and Henri Cartier-Bresson. The following year he met Gerda Pohorylle (later Gerda Taro), a German Jewish refugee who became his companion and agent. In 1936 he documented the rise to power of the Popular Front and the ensuing strikes. On July 18 the Spanish Civil War breaks out, which he follows as a reporter. Begins collaboration with New York’s Life magazine. In 1938 he embarks for Hong Kong, where he works on a documentary on Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion. In October he returns to Spain where he witnesses the departure of the International Brigades and the end of the conflict. The following year he follows the Tour de France. At the outbreak of war in Europe he leaves for New York, where “Life” commissions him to cover several reports in the United States and Mexico. In 1943 he follows the Allied campaign in North Africa, the liberation of Sicily and the Allied advance into Italy. The following year he awaits the landing in London and is part of the first American wave that lands on Omaha Beach. He advances to Paris alongside the liberation troops and enters the capital with the French Second Armored Division. In Belgium, he witnesses the Ardennes offensive. In 1945, photographs the liberation of Germany. Met Ingrid Bergman in Paris, with whom he began a relationship that would last two years. In 1947 with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour (“Chim”), George Rodger and William Vandivert he founds the Magnum photo agency, organized as a cooperative. On May 14, 1948, he witnesses in Tel Aviv the proclamation of the independence of the Israeli state and the war that would follow. In 1954 he spent three weeks in Japan and then left for Indochina where he assisted in the evacuation of wounded prisoners at Diên Biên Phu. On May 25, while entering a camp to photograph a French patrol accompanying a detachment between Nam Dinh and Thai Binh, North Vietnam, he is killed by a land mine that explodes under his feet.

Image: Robert Capa, Sicilian peasant shows an American soldier where the Germans have gone, near Troina, August 1943 © Robert Capa © International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos

Milan, at the Diocesan Museum a major exhibition on Robert Capa with more than 300 photographs

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