Palazzo Braschi in Rome hosts from June 25 to October 19, 2025 George Hoyningen-Huene. Art.Fashion.Cinema, an exhibition celebrating, 125 years after the author’s birth, his crucial role in fashion photography and beyond. Promoted by Roma Capitale and conceived by CMS.Cultura, the initiative enjoys the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, the Institut Français Italia and the collaboration of the George Hoyningen-Huene Archive in Stockholm. Curated by Susanna Brown, a historical figure at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the exhibition lands in Rome after its success in Milan. The exhibition, a first in the capital, articulates the biographical and artistic journey of the Russian-American photographer in ten sections, housing more than one hundred platinum-printed images.
The technique, prized for its finesse and tonal rendering, sophisticatedly underscores the stylistic evolutions of his vast repertoire. Notable images include surreal portraits, nudes sculpted by light, and compositions with a classical feel. George Hoyningen-Huene (St. Petersburg, 1900 - Los Angeles, 1968), born of an American mother and Estonian baron father, fled following the October Revolution, moving first to London and then, in 1920, to Paris. In the Ville Lumière he entered Man Ray’s circle and frequented leading Surrealist artists such as Dali, Picasso, Miller, Eluard and Cocteau: a crucial creative presence, told through images in the exhibition. Richard Avedon called him “a genius, the master of us all. ”Hoyningen-Huene’s signature portraits, considered among the most striking of the twentieth century, redefined the photographic portrait and the aesthetics of fashion.
The exhibition begins with Visions of an Era, an introductory area populated with hand-annotated photographs. Between Jazz and Ballets Russes: Dreams of Beauty in the Ville Lumière offers an immersion in the Parisian atmosphere of the 1920s, with shots devoted to Diaghilev, Lifar, Spessivtzeva, Baker and Barry. Immediately following, Swimwear and the Allure of the Ideal Body features iconic images such as Divers, in which Horst P. Horst and Lee Miller pose with their backs turned, one of Anna Wintour’s five favorite shots in the history of Vogue.
The Reflections of Antiquity section offers sculptural and chiaroscuro compositions evoking classical art; Mirages of Light: Huene’s Visual Odyssey documents Hoyningen-Huene’s travels between Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and Greece, bringing back images from five books published between 1938 and 1946. In the room Sculptures of Light: The Male Nudebetween Classical andModern instead celebrates the male nude, with images with a studied style in detail, often illuminated as if shot outdoors.
His move to New York in 1936 as chief photographer for Harper’s Bazaar and his landing in Hollywood in 1946 are illustrated through images and documents of the time. The years alongside directors such as George Cukor and artists such as Man Ray, Ernst and Lee Miller, the protagonist of an intense collaboration with Hoyningen-Huene, also documented through excerpts from Cocteau’s short film The Blood of a Poet, are reconstructed.
The section The Essence of Dream: Huene, Chanel and the Influence of Surrealism shows the surreal influence on fashion, with images in which the aesthetics of Chanel and Schiaparelli enter into dialogue with visionary atmospheres.Timeless models : new icons of modernitycollects cult shots featuring Agneta Fischer, Lee Miller and imaginative compositions with strong visual impact, including one of Miller holding a crystal ball in which Fisher appears. Further on, the room devoted to Harper’s Bazaar illustrates the aesthetic revolution introduced into the U.S. fashion world: featured are archival magazines and features such as Divers and Swimwear by Izod.
Finally, Hollywood and the Enchantment of Cinema collects portraits of the great movie stars, Bergman, Chaplin, Garbo, Gardner, Hepburn, immortalized by Hoyningen-Huene between 1954 and 1963, a period when he worked as color coordinator for numerous productions. In particular, artistic collaboration with Sophia Loren and George Cukor emerges. Projected are highlights from the films The Devil in Pink Shorts and Olympia, in which Hoyningen-Huene’s color gimmicks were inspired by classical painting, such as Manet’s painting Dwarf (1877). The exhibition also includes letters and fragments of the epistolary exchange with Loren. Between 1946 and 1950 the photographer signed documentaries such as The Garden of Hieronymus Bosch and Daphni: Virgin of the Golden Laurels. In 1968, a few months after being seized by a stroke in his Los Angeles home, he died on Sept. 12. His archive, acquired in 2020 by Tommy and Åsa Rönngren, is now kept in Stockholm: the George Hoyningen-Huene Estate is responsible for the preservation, study and promotion of his works.
On the occasion of the exhibition, free audio guides in Italian and English and a catalog edited by Moebius Editions are available. Radio Monte Carlo is official radio; media partner is Sky Arte.
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| Pioneers posing: George Hoyningen-Huene between fashion, art and cinema at Palazzo Braschi, Rome |
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