Published 05/01/2021
We are pleased to announce that the Maria Mulas archive is now represented by Bridgeman Images worldwide.
"Ugo gave me my first camera, which had belonged to my father. I was a little girl... That's how it all started: with an old, magnificent Leica." (Interview - Rome, 26 September 2018)
Maria Mulas (Manerba del Garda 1935) began her career at a very young age as a painter but - as she herself recounts in various interviews - the influence of her brother Ugo and having a darkroom at her disposal soon attracted her to photography.
Printing her own work is a constant for Maria Mulas, and perhaps one of the keys to understanding the strength of her work. Especially her work in portraiture, the genre for which she has become famous.
Maria Mulas' archive is first and foremost a rich catalogue of celebrities from the world of culture, both Milanese and international, portrayed mostly in black and white. Beuys, Warhol, Richter, Pane, Bourgeois, Colombo, Castellani, Dorfles, Baselitz, Kapoor, Tilson, Johns, Rauschenberg, Koons, Strehler, Grass, Pivano, Moravia, De Chirico... just to mention a few names.
Spontaneity (of the subjects) and abstraction (of the black and white) could be said to be the two guidelines that accompany Maria Mulas' work.
A smile from Abbado.
Andy Warhol and Maria Mulas photographing each other
The theatre (by theatre we mean the Piccolo Teatro in Milan) and Giorgio Strehler were a fundamental meeting point for the photographer. It was the 1960s in Milan, and the Piccolo was a place of protest and experimentation.
On the other hand, for Mulas, theatre is an opportunity for a direct confrontation with action and movement, with longer exposure times.
Reportage and research are not alien to Maria Mulas' work, and as such can be found in the archive. Fashion, architecture, precious urban views. Almost always in Milan, which, we might say, was one of the hubs for the arrival and spread of international and avant-garde culture in Italy.
Bridgeman Images represents the copyright of Maria Mulas, which means that her incredible images are available for your project without any further steps or permissions from other institutions.
Would you like to see more images from the Maria Mulas archive currently available on our website? View our selection.
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