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Photographs: Under 1K

Monday 19 June 2023, 11:00 AM • Milan

245

Arrigo Orsi

(1897 - 1968)

Tavolozza di fiori, 1950s

Artist's Resale Right

Estimate

€ 400 - 1.000

Sold

€ 581

The price includes buyer's premium

Information

Vintage Kodak dye transfer print
cm 18,5 x 19,3 | 7.2 x 7.6 in.
Didactic photographer's credit stamp with notes in blue ink and archivio opera Arrigo Orsi stamp on the verso
Although he was not a professional photographer - he was a doctor specialising in physiology - Arrigo Orsi devoted himself to photography with the passion that characterised cultured amateurs from the 1940s onwards. It was in the environment of the Circolo Fotografico Milanese that he found the right interlocutors with whom to debate the issues of the expansion of photography culture in post-war Italy. This prompted him to leave the circle in 1950 to follow Pietro Donzelli in the new adventure of the Unione Fotografica (International Association of Photographic Exhibitions), of which he would be the director for years, overseeing the organisation of important exhibitions on an international level. In spite of everything, Arrigo Orsi remains a figure that is difficult to ascribe to a single style: his archive contains classic images in a reportage style with a social slant, as well as daring experiments close to kinetic art and the Bauhaus lesson suggested to him by his closeness to Luigi Veronesi. Among the photographs shown here is also one in colour: the photographer's taste for research had led him to experiment with Kodak's refined Dye Transfer technique in the 1940s, which allowed a perfect and faithful colour rendition.