LA MOSTRA “ROBERT CAPA. RETROSPETTIVA”
The exhibition on Robert Capa is a collection of photographs taken by this famous photojournalist. The exhibition held at Villa Mussolini in Riccione features more than 100 black and white photographs documenting the major conflicts of the 20th century, personally witnessed by Capa from 1936 to 1954.
Some of the photographs on display at the exhibition in Riccione have by now become iconic: such as the “Death of a Loyalist Militiaman” a photo taken in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, and the photos of the landing of American troops in Normandy, in June 1944.
John Steinbeck once wrote that his friend Robert Capa knew that “you cannot photograph war, because it is largely an emotion.” However, continued Steinbeck, “he did photograph that emotion by shooting beside it. He could show the horror of a whole people in the face of a child”.
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The exhibition on Robert Capa is divided into 13 sections: Copenhagen 1932, France 1936-1939, Spain 1936-1939, China 1938, Great Britain and North Africa 1941 – 1943, Italy 1943 – 1944, France 1944, Germany 1945, Eastern Europe 1947, Israel 1948-1950, Indochina 1954, a section dedicated to portraits of friends and artists such
as Gary Cooper, Ernest Hemingway, Ingrid Bergman, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Truman Capote, John Huston, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck; and finally a section dedicated to Gerda Taro and Robert Capa, a cameo of three different photos: a portrait of Robert taken by Ruth Orkin, one of Gerda taken by Robert, and a ‘double portrait’ of both of them by Fred Stein. A way in which this exhibition remembers their human story and their intense relationship.
The exhibition Robert Capa Retrospective is promoted by the Municipality of Riccione, organized by Civita Mostre e Musei, in collaboration with Magnum Photos and Rjma Cultural Projects.
BIOGRAFIA DI ROBERT CAPA
Robert Capa (Budapest, 22 October 1913 -Thai Binh, Indochina, 25 May 1954) is the pseudonym for Endre Friedmann he invented together with his partner Gerda Taro in 1936.
At a young age, he left his homeland and went to live in Germany, after his involvement in protests against the Hungarian far-right government.
Capa’s original ambition was to become a writer. However, his job with a photo studio in Berlin, where he was also working with the photojournalism agency Dephot led by Simon Guttmann, brought him closer to the world of photography.
He got his first assignment to cover a conference by Trotsky in Copenhagen in 1932.
In 1933, he left Germany for France due to the advent of Nazism (Capa was Jewish), but in France it was difficult for him to work as a freelance photographer.
From 1936 to 1939 he was in Spain, where he documented the horrors of the civil war, together with his young partner Gerda Taro. The novel ‘The Girl with the Leica’ by Helena Janeczek and winner of the Strega Prize in 2018 is dedicated to her.
Partly out of challenge, partly out of opportunity, the two ‘invented’ the fictitious character of ‘Robert Capa’, a famous American photographer, who had come to Paris to work in Europe.
Thanks to this unusual expedient, the couple got many more work assignments.
In the beginning, the ‘Capa-Taro’ brand name was used by both photographers (Gerda’s real family name was Pohorylle).
The two later split the ‘company name’ – CAPA – and Endre Friedman adopted the Robert Capa pseudonym just for himself.
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Capa then went to China where he covered the resistance against the Japanese invasion in 1938.
After a few months in London, in 1943 he was sent to North Africa and then followed the Allied landings in Sicily. On display is a large selection of photos taken on the island. He then followed the American army on to Naples and Cassino.
Capa then covered the Allied landings in Normandy on the famous D-Day, which he documented in an extraordinary manner. The exhibition also presents Capa’s photographs of the liberation of Paris in 1944, the invasion of Germany in 1945, about his trip to Ukraine and the Soviet Union in 1947, the official founding of the state of Israel in 1948, and finally his last assignment in Indochina in 1954, the year when he was killed by a landmine.
