Stardust
Opening: Thursday, November 26, at 6:30 pm
November 27, 2026 – January 16, 2027
Tuesday to Saturday, 3–7 pm
Curated by Glenda Cinquegrana. In collaboration with the Mario De Biasi Archive and Admira
Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting is pleased to present Mario De Biasi, Stardust, an exhibition organized in collaboration with the Mario De Biasi Archive and Admira and devoted to one of the central figures of postwar Italian photography. Through a carefully selected group of images centered on portraiture and urban landscape, the exhibition revisits some of the most significant strands in the work of Mario De Biasi (Belluno, 1923 – Milan, 2013), among the foremost exponents of Italian Neorealism and internationally recognized for a body of work encompassing, in particular, portraits of celebrities and intellectuals of his time, as well as Milanese shots of his iconic places. The title Stardust evokes De Biasi’s portraits of Italian and international celebrities of the 1950s and ’60s. Before his lens appeared, some of the great figures of cinema at the time, including Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Marlene Dietrich, were captured far from the rigidity of official portraiture. In these photographs, De Biasi sidesteps the conventional relationship of admiration between photographer and star: by catching a gesture or an expression, he restores to the cover star not only a beauty never reduced to cliché, but also a sense of human truth. Alongside this group are portraits of leading figures in Italian culture, including Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina, Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo. Together, these images compose a portrait of postwar Italy and testify to De Biasi’s inexhaustible curiosity about its people and places, as well as the country’s social transformations. A second, more concise section of the exhibition is devoted to Milan, the city in which De Biasi lived and worked for much of his life. In his images, the urban landscape emerges as a real space, yet one constantly poised between human truth and a poetic dimension. Prominent within the exhibition is Gli Italiani si voltano (The Italians Turn Around), the celebrated photograph of Moira Orfei, seen from behind through the practice of pedinamento as she walks along a street under the gaze of men gathered outside the bar of Milan’s Galleria, watching her as she passes. It is an iconic image that captures a distinctly Italian social custom while giving form to an entire social landscape of the Bel Paese. Mario De Biasi’s career coincided with an extraordinary period in international photojournalism. Born into a family of modest means and self-taught as a photographer, he joined the editorial staff of Epoca in 1953 as a photojournalist. Modelled on international magazines such as LIFE, the Italian illustrated weekly would help shape cultural communication in postwar Italy. The Italian press developed and consolidated — not least through De Biasi’s effectiveness as a photographer — the full educational, documentary and narrative power characteristic of the popular mass media of the period. For Epoca, De Biasi documented places, conflicts and social events across the world. Photography became for him a means of documenting reality without relinquishing the narrative construction of the image. In his work for the magazine, De Biasi brought all his gifts to bear: an inexhaustible curiosity about the world, subtle sensitivity, and a love of beauty that never obscured the image’s sincerity.
In collaboration with
