From Dec. 6, 2025 to April 19, 2026, Piove di Sacco (Padua, Italy) will host Lightning Genius, an exhibition dedicated to Philippe Halsman (Riga, 1906 - New York, 1979), staged in the spaces of Palazzo Pinato Valeri. Curated by Alessandra Mauro and Suleima Autore, in collaboration with the Halsman Archive in New York, the exhibition is promoted and produced by the City of Piove di Sacco (PD) | Cultura and Contrasto, with the support of BCC Veneta Credito Cooperativo S.C., and realized together with the Padua Chamber of Commerce and Venicepromex. The initiative pays tribute to one of the most brilliant and unpredictable portraitists of the 20th century.
His vision, capable of combining introspection, technical experimentation, immediate intuition and a sensibility close to surrealism, profoundly marked the history of the image of the 20th century. His professional path took shape in the Paris of the 1930s, in a cultural climate dominated by Surrealism that would profoundly influence his way of looking at the world: an estranged and creative gaze. From his earliest portraits, his technical precision and ability to restore an unexpected vitality to each face emerge, often through innovative solutions and experimental use of equipment. With his move to New York in 1940, Halsman brought with him his European sensibility, psychological taste and willingness to reinvent each image, revolutionizing the portraiture of the great American magazines, including Life, for which he would become one of the most representative photographers.
In the course of his career, Churchill, Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Yves Montand, Barbra Streisand, Picasso, Chagall, Einstein, Oppenheimer have passed in front of his lens. A special role belongs to Salvador Dalí, with whom he will initiate a long and fruitful collaboration, culminating in a series of images that combine imagination, surrealism and technical virtuosity.
For Halsman, each portrait is a small, custom-built set, a kind of performance designed to lay bare the subject’s personality. Among the most famous sections in the exhibition is that devoted to jumpology, the series in which stars and personalities agree to jump in front of the camera. According to Halsman, “when you ask a person to jump, all the attention is focused on the act of jumping: the mask falls off and the person behind it is shown.”
The author of more than 101 covers for Life than any other photographer, Halsman has defined a new way of understanding photographic portraiture, mixing irony, technical precision and psychological investigation. Flash of Genius aims to collect and present to the public the essence of his work. One hundred photographs in different formats, in color and black and white, along with volumes and documents spanning the photographer’s entire career, will be on display.
The 2025/2026 exhibition appointment at Palazzo Pinato Valeri also becomes one of the thematic references of the CQFP Come When It Rains Outside project, funded by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers Department for Family Policies for initiatives aimed at combating educational poverty and social exclusion of children and young people. Within the initiative is the “Jump Art” action, which offers workshops and activities inspired by the concepts of introspection (self-portrait), overcoming, passage and lightness (leap), offering children, families and communities creative tools to deal with fragility and difficulties with greater awareness.
The exhibition catalog is published by Contrasto.
Hours:
Wednesday and Thursday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.; Sunday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 7 p.m. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
|
|
| Philippe Halsman's flashes of genius on display in Piove di Sacco (Padua) |
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.
