Ripensare il ritratto, tra fotografia e pittura

In the essay, I focus on the typology of portrait as explored by the artists Ubaldo Oppi and Arturo Martini in the painting "La povertà serena" and the sculpture "Nena" respectively. I develop the analysis by contextualizing the works within the discussion around the representation of human figure in Europe in the 1920s, with special focus on the connections between painting and photography at the time of Neue Sachlichkeit and "Magical Realism". By exploring how the notions of subjectivity, traditionally associated with portraiture, and objectivity, as articulated through the photographic image, were intertwined and mutually influential back then, I finally consider the interexchange between painterly and sculptural properties which seems to characterize both the artworks.