Richard Avedon

Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Katharine Hepburn, Rudolf Nureyev, and Bob Dylan are some of the celebrated cultural figures of the past six decades whose portraits will be on view in the show. The exhibition will also highlight talents whose legacies have particularly impacted Switzerland, including Sophia Loren, Charlie Chaplin and Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel.

The exhibition will present the breadth of Avedon’s achievements and encompass works spanning his entire career. A particular highlight will be the 1955 photograph Dovima with elephants (1955), one of the fashion world’s most iconic pictures, and featured in collections of renowned art institutions across the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Avedon’s relationship with artists, such as Francis Bacon, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti, and Andy Warhol, will be emphasized throughout the exhibition. The artist’s striking 1969 portrait of Warhol, bearing the shots he received from a former Factory collaborator a year prior, underscores the raw and bold subject matter that Avedon pursued throughout his career. Similar depth is evoked in the portrait of Francis Bacon on a white background. Speaking on this work, Avedon said: ‘The white background isolates the subject from itself and permits you to explore the geography of the face; the unexplored continents in the human face.’ Photographed a decade after the death of Bacon’s lover, George Dyer, the photograph brilliantly exposes the painter’s interior complexity.