Museo Fortuny

Fortuny Museum

MARIANO FORTUNY: JOURNEY TO EGYPT - An Artist's Photographic Notebook

Project

More than sixty fascinating images; previously unpublished, these were taken by the artist during a visit to Egypt in 1938.
Selected by Silvio Fuso and painstakingly printed by Giorgio Molinari using special techniques, the pictures come from the valuable collections of the Museo Fortuny.
The exhibition, designed by Daniela Ferretti, is being held in the remarkable setting of Fortuny’s own studio, on the first piano nobile of the palace.

Collected by the artist himself in a number of precious small-size albums, these photographs remain distinct from the rest of Fortuny’s better known work; as a photographer, Mariano Fortuny is in many ways different to the retiring star of fashion and art.
Though even here one can see his command of the medium and his capacity to move the viewer, there is no doubt that Fortuny neither was – nor aimed to be – a professional photographer; as is well known, he used the camera mainly as an tool for his work as a scenographer and textile designer. Nevertheless, even here he inevitably reveals his eye as an artist: in the private shots and the pictures taken as an aide-memoire, he certainly achieved results that bear comparison with those of the more famous photographers amongst his contemporaries.