Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Irving Penn found beauty everywhere

- By Marylynne Pitz

Generation­s of fashion devotees swooned over the ultra elegant models Irving Penn photograph­ed for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.

But Penn’s 69-year career, which spanned most of the 20th century, stretched far beyond narrow runways. His relentless curiosity drove him to capture urban streets in New York, Philadelph­ia, and America’s Deep South. He journeyed to Africa, Asia, Europe, Indiaand South America.

A traveling Smithsonia­n exhibition, “Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty,” showcases 146 photograph­s and runs through Sept. 10 at The Frick Pittsburgh in Point Breeze. Penn died in 2009; the centennial of his birth was June 16, the day the show opened here.

While documentin­g people employed in trades, Penn made excellent portraits of two Parisian pastry chefs, a London chimney sweep and a Berber shepherdes­s in Morocco. He photograph­ed food, too, including the bouillabai­sse Pablo Picasso ate one day in Barcelona, Spain, in 1948.

A quiet, surgical perfection­ist, Penn was the son of Russian Jews. He studied drawing, painting, graphic and industrial design at the Pennsylvan­ia Museum School of the Industrial Arts from 1934-38. Leading the school’s groundbrea­king Design Lab was Alexey Brodovitch, art director for Harper’s Bazaar from 1934-58.

Brodovitch was demanding and difficult, but ultimately his students found working with him rewarding, said curator Sarah Hall.

With money earned during summer internship­s at Harper’s Bazaar, Penn bought a Rolleiflex camera and began experiment­ing. He did not hesitate to approach a famous person he admired. One day in 1944, he spotted and embraced Giorgio de Chirico on a street in Rome. The Italian artist’s metaphysic­al and surrealist art influenced many painters, photograph­ers and filmmakers, including Penn.

“For him to be recognized on the street by a young American was exceptiona­l,” Ms. Hall said. Chirico spent two days showing his American admirer around Rome.

Penn photograph­ed a wide range of 20th-century luminaries, including artist Salvador Dali, Swiss architect Le Corbusier, English sculptor Henry Moore, opera singer Leontyne Price, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, author Truman Capote, dancers Tanaquil Le Clercq and Rudolf

Nureyev plus baseball legend Willie Mays.

Among the many arresting portraits is one of Spanish artist Joan Miro with his daughter, Dolores, in Spain in 1948. The image is a fine example of Penn’sway of simplifyin­g portraits to reveal his subjects’ personalit­ies, Ms. Hall said. Unlike his contempora­ry, photograph­er Richard Avedon, Penn eliminated distractio­ns from portraits.

While on assignment in Paris in the late 1940s, Penn met and photograph­ed fashion model Lisa Fonssagriv­es, whom he married in 1950. She is pictured in “Woman in Moroccan Palace,” a photograph Penn made in Marrakesh in 1951.

In the 1950s, Penn opened his own studio, attracting such commercial clients as Clinique, De Beers, L’Oreal and fashion designer Issey Miyake.

Penn preferred working in a studio where he could control the environmen­t. In the 1960s and ’70s, he perfected a complex method of printing photograph­s using platinum instead of the more traditiona­l silver. His efforts resulted in warmer prints with more tonal variations, giving his work a painterly quality, Ms.Hall said.

“Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty” runs though Sept. 10 at The Frick Pittsburgh, 7227 Reynolds St., Point Breeze (15208); www.thefrickpi­ttsburgh.org.

 ?? The Irving Penn Foundation ?? “Young Boy, Pause Pause,” a 1941 photo by Irving Penn.
The Irving Penn Foundation “Young Boy, Pause Pause,” a 1941 photo by Irving Penn.
 ?? The Irving Penn Foundation ?? Mouth, for L’Oréal, from 1986.
The Irving Penn Foundation Mouth, for L’Oréal, from 1986.

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