The ONASSIS STEGI proudly presents the first solo exhibition in Greece of iconic American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. In collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in NEW YORK, the exhibition brings together more than a hundred of Mapplethorpe’s works, all representing the artist’s unique aesthetics.
Mapplethorpe is considered to be one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and a milestone of the American avant-garde scene. His legend grew bigger when his eccentric lifestyle and provocative, autobiographical to a large extent, art were brutally stopped by his untimely death at the late 80s.
His work has been since become the subject of extended study while the directness and honesty in his approach to life and art continue to attract large interest worldwide.
An exhibition featuring over one hundred photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989), the photographer who epitomized the American avant-garde—or, more accurately, perhaps, the NEW YORK underground arts scene of the ’70s and ’80s.
Robert Mapplethorpe was as famous for his personal life as he was for his photographs, which largely reflect, iconize and hence bear witness to a particular generation and era in American life.
That otherwise inaccessible figures from Manhattan’s high society should have allowed themselves to be photographed by Mapplethorpe is extremely telling. His photographs of flowers are as convincing as his interiors, his self-portraits, portraits of famous and everyday PEOPLE, of children, models, men and women of the day and night, athletes and dancers, intellectuals and artists.
But Mapplethorpe is not just famous for his daring self-referential photographs. His unique grasp of form, the way in which he manipulates light and frames his shots, the abstraction and economy (when needed) of his photographs, the geometry of his space and forms, the breadth of his subject-matter (different aspects of human existence) all make him one of the greats.