Herbert List

Anna Magnani, 1956

Herbert List (Hamburg 1903 - Munich 1975), born in Germany, was a classically educated artist who combined a love of the photographic medium with his fascination with surrealism and classicism. From the 1930's to the 1950's List, a multilinguist and world traveler created a stunningly personal and beautiful body of work.

Herbert List 'told' Italy to the world through his intense black and white pictures between years 1940 and 1950. In that time he spoke about forms, bodies, matter: a earthly metaphysics with which he succeeded, in every photograph, in revealing truths hidden in the perfect forms of classical art as well as in a thorax lying under the sun, in the rough hands of a porter of Termini Railway Station, in the narrow alleys of Trastevere or in the Ligurian coast. It's the naked, real life, that at first rises and then crush, leaving us breathless.


Italy (1940-1950) by Herbert List (I / 2)


Italy (1940-1950) by Herbert List (II / 2)

Florence, 1939