No other figure has been able to break the "crystal ceiling" as Lee Miller did in the first half of the twentieth century in photography. In Venice, an exhibition opening at Palazzo Franchetti retraces its creative story and confirms its role as a privileged witness to many events of the Short Century.
It is in the extraordinary setting of Palazzo Franchetti, in Venice, that the exhibition Lee Miller-Man Ray will come to life on November 5th. Fashion, Love and War. Curated by Victoria Noel-Johnson, it will be dedicated to a figure who is finally gaining the position that belongs to her in the context of the history of 20th century visual arts: the brilliant American photographer Lee Miller. So far the artist has been declined according to an outdated vision, that is exclusively from the male point of view: as a muse and love of the famous photographer Man ray or as the wife of the British painter Roland Penrose. Yet the stature of lee miller is such as to overshadow many of his contemporary artists: she was the one to devise the technique of solarization so used by Man Ray; she was the now to document key events in the history of the twentieth century, such as the Blitz on London, the battle of normandy, the liberation of Paris or the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau.
Lee Miller on display at Palazzo Franchetti
At the heart of the Venetian exhibition, open until 10 April 2023, is the relationship between Lee Miller and Man Ray that began in Paris in 1929. A crucial year for women’s emancipation in art, as he also saw Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and her "daring ladies", Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan, found the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Both Americans in Paris, the two artists fell in love and Man Ray introduced the young photographer to the incredible world of avant-garde art, where she had the opportunity to portray figures like Pablo Picasso or Max Ernst and meet Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico and Jean Cocteau. The love with Man Ray was ephemeral, however, and in 1932 Miller returned to New York. After meeting Roland Penrose he moved to London and became a photographer for Vogue UK in the horrible years of World War II. In 1944 she began working as a correspondent for Time Life; it was at that time that the photographer David Scherman made the famous photo of Lee Miller in Hitler’s bathtub, present in the exhibition of Palazzo Franchetti.
140 photos of Lee Miller and Man Ray on display in Venice
In addition to the focus on the relationship with Man Ray, transformed over the decades from love into friendship, the exhibition is an opportunity to claim the fundamental role of Lee Miller in the context of photography. Thanks to the collaboration with the Lee Miller Archives and the Marconi Foundation in Milan, the Palazzo Franchetti exhibition offers 140 photographs by Miller and Man Ray, as well as art objects and video testimonies. A great revenge for an artist who had to wait until 1955 to be finally exposed in the exhibition The family man, curiously in that MoMA in New York so strongly wanted by Abby Aldrich and the "daring ladies" of 1929.