Herbert List: The Magic Eye

Herbert List: The Magic Eye
Bucerius Kunst Forum
Alter Wall 12, 20457 Hamburg
14.05 – 11.09.2022
buceriuskunstforum.de

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The Bucerius Kunst Forum presents the first international survey exhibition of the work of Hamburg-born photographer Herbert List (1903–1975) in more than two decades. The retrospective spans the artist’s entire career, from his Surrealist works made before 1945 to his visions of life in antiquity and extensive pictorial accounts of non-European cultures, all the way to the male nudes with which List avowed his own homosexuality.

List’s work before 1945 betrays the strong influence of pittura metafisica and Surrealism. Like Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte, he strove to visualize the more inscrutable and ambiguous aspects of reality. Many of his photographs, whether taken in Hamburg, Paris, or Athens, exude an aura of mystery and enigma. While traveling in Mediterranean climes, List set out to bring the ideals of classical Greek and Roman antiquity back to life in his pictures. He later revived this magical world in photographs taken amid the ruins of Munich after 1945. After the war, he devoted his energies primarily to photo essays, producing extensive reports on Naples, the Caribbean, and Mexico, published either in book form or in leading magazines such as Life, Heute, and DU. His interest in non-European cultures eventually led to extensive series on Nigerian, Oceanic, and pre-Columbian sculpture.

Further chapters in the exhibition explore List’s penchant for the male nude as well as his portraits of modern artists including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Alexander Calder, and Giorgio Morandi, and writers such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ingeborg Bachmann.

List’s keenness to interact with people and learn their stories is particularly evident in his portraits and early street photography and is also reflected in his photojournalism. His own special “currency” was his open mind for those he encountered and his interest in delving into their innermost secrets.

The exhibition, a collaboration between the Bucerius Kunst Forum, the Herbert List Estate and the Herbert List Archive at the Munich City Museum, presents some 240 original photographs dating from 1930 to 1966.

Curated by Dr. Kathrin Baumstark, Dr. Ulrich Pohlmann.

buceriuskunstforum.de