Villa Pisani in Straalong the Brenta Riviera, is the perfect setting for the large monographic exhibition on Federico Garollaedited by Uliano Lucas and Tatiana Agliani, proposed with the title “People of Italy. Photographs 1948 – 1968”.
The sumptuous villa frescoed by Tiepolo, with its famous labyrinth and magnificent park, becomes the place for staging a cross-section of our society after the Second World War through the sensitivity of Federico Garolla. Years of restart but still full of difficulties as represented by the difficult daily life in the towns of the Riviera of the Brenta river, where ordinary people tried to escape a difficult survival. The one effectively captured by a reportage by Garolla made in 1956 and which, reproduced in large images, populates the park of the Villa within the stable space with memories.
The exhibition, promoted by the Regional Directorate of Veneto Museums – National Museum of Villa Pisani in collaboration with Suazes and Isabella Garolla, is open to the public from 24 April 2024 to 27 October 2024.
“A selection of photographs taken by Garolla precisely in the places adjacent to the Villa Pisani complex and which we wanted to exhibit in an installation inside the Park” points out Loretta Zega director of the National Museum of Villa Pisani.
A section that integrates with the exhibition (about 100 photographs) and is captivating the spirit of post-war Italythe years in which, with difficulty, we tried to heal the divisions and wounds of a lost war and from the past tragedy we drew strength and creativity to start what would later be recognized as the “Italian miracle”.
Federico Garolla’s goal was to range, with promptness and clarity, from the glitter of the first fashion shows, to the nascent star system, to ordinary people. A work that makes us the image of a people in need of rediscovering the awareness of belonging to a nation and of participating in the reconstruction through a new history of optimism and modernity. With his unmistakable style, Garolla observes this transformation, capturing modernity, but at the same time also its profound contradictions. “Garolla photographs people, those who are together, reconciled and reunited, the people who participate in the collective rites of fun, of the joy of having survived. His work is attentive to the facts and gives us the soul and the essence”underlines Daniele Ferrara, owner of the Regional Directorate of Venetian Museums of the Ministry of Culture, an institution which, with the Directorate of the Museum of Villa Pisani in Stra and the collaboration of Suazes and Isabella Garolla, promotes this great exhibition.… read the rest of the article”
The lens of this giant of Italian photography from the last century immortalizes landscapes, common people, famous people, fashions and traditions, always with a light and never indiscreet touch. It was the fifties with the golden age of illustrated magazines and the spread of television was still a distant phenomenon. Garolla will become the main witness to the affirmation of the great tailors of Roman high fashion of which he will become one of the protagonists, making a posing service a reportage inserted into everyday life.
“Garolla belongs to the photojournalism generation only because, in the era in which his talent was expressed, museums, especially in Italy, did not take photography into consideration as an artistic expression. This exhibition aims to contribute – underlines the curator Uliano Lucas – to place this important photographer of ours in the right position.”
The exhibition brings together over 100 photographs which offer a complete cross-section of his production, from his reportages dedicated to the world of cinema, his innovative work dedicated to the world of Roman tailoring with portraits of Valentino, Capucci, the Fontana Sisters and Schuberth. However, his passion is artists like Guttuso and De Chirico filmed in their ateliers, the musicians from Stravinsky to Rubinstein, to writers like Elsa Morante and Ungaretti – to whom he volunteered to act as a driver just to enjoy his proximity – these are just some of his reportages dedicated to the evolution of the Italian situation between the drive to become one of the most industrialized countries and the deep bond with tradition.
Federica Garolla (1925-2012)
He was born in Naples in 1925. In 1936 he moved to Eritrea with his family, where he approached the world of journalism and photography, writing for the Corriere di Asmara. At the end of the Second World War he returned to Italy, to Naples, where he collaborated with Il Mattino, Il Domani d’Italia and Settimana Incom Carta. In 1950 he moved to Milan where he dedicated himself completely to photojournalism: he created numerous reportages for prestigious newspapers such as L’Europeo, Tempo Illustrato, L’Illustrazione Italiana, Oggi. The shots are also published in foreign magazines such as Paris Match, National Geographic, Colliers, Stern. In 1951 he was a special correspondent for Epoca, and later for Le Ore. Since 1953 he has documented the birth of Italian high fashion, immortalising young designers in their ateliers and models on the street for magazines such as Eva, Annabella, Donna, Bellezza, Arianna, Grazia and Amica. In 1956 he moved to Rome where he founded Foto Italia of the Agenzia Italia of which he was the first director. At the same time he bears witness to Italian cultural life by immortalising painters, writers, musicians, cinema and theater actors. But he also photographs ordinary people and life in the post-war years. In the 1960s he opened the Studio GPO advertising agency and created campaigns for companies such as Cirio, Locatelli and Spigadoro. He illustrates gastronomy columns and cookbooks published by Longanesi and De Agostini. In 1968 he began his career in Rai as a director and journalist for some news programs and for a series of documentaries. At the same time he creates photographic reports dedicated to museums, places of architectural and landscape interest, later published by Mondadori, Rizzoli, Domus, De Agostini. In 1982, with Mario Monti, he founded a publishing house that published museum guides drawing on his extensive photographic archive. At the end of the 90s he dedicated himself to cataloging and recovering his archive. In the 2000s he closed the publishing house and, with his daughter Isabella, concentrated solely on enhancing his archive.
