Maurizio Galimberti
Maurizio Galimberti was born in Como in 1956. He moved to Milan where he now lives and works.
He approaches the world of analog photography debuting with the use of a Widelux rotating lens camera and then in 1983 focusing his commitment, in a radical and definitive way, on Polaroid.
In 1991 he began his collaboration with Polaroid Italia, for which he soon became the official testimonial, producing the POLAROID PRO ART volume published in 1995, which has become a true cult object for fans of integral Polaroid film. He is named “Instant Artist” and is the creator of the “Italian Polaroid Collection.”
In 1992 he was awarded the prestigious “Grand Prix Kodak Advertising Italy.” For KODAK ITALIA, he creates a traveling exhibition of the series I Maestri in 2000.
He continued his research with Polaroid and reinvented the “Photographic Mosaic” technique, which he initially adapted for portraits. The first experiment was in 1989 when he portrayed his son Giorgio. This was followed by portraits of Michele Trussardi, Carla Fracci and Mimmo Rotella from which the reference to the photodynamism of the Bragaglias and the search for rhythm, movement is evident. Numerous become the portraits executed in the world of cinema, art and culture. The popularity and success with which these representations of faces are received lead him to participate as an official portraitist at the Venice Film Festival.
In 1999 he was listed by the Italian magazine “CLASS” as the first Italian photographer-portraitist within the monthly magazine’s rankings of merit.
His portrait of Johnny Depp, taken during the 2003 edition of the Venice Film Festival, is chosen as the image for the September cover of the prestigious Times Magazine.
“Mosaic” soon becomes the technique for portraying not only faces, but also landscapes, architecture and cities. With balance Galimberti alternates the emotion for the composition, in which the search for rhythm becomes more manifest, of which the Mosaics are an example, with a propensity toward the detail, the intimate scene to be filmed and immortalized whose rendering is represented by a single shot, that is, the single Polaroid. His works on landscape, on cities and the space that characterizes them, alternate between these two points of view, these two different ways of telling the same reality.
Ritratti
Sometimes the quiet pace of my portraits poses the subjects to ask themselves a question…Mauritius where do I look? what do I do? I don’t answer and shoot without wasting a second…in five minutes the shoot is finished…in perfect order…ready to be edited…without adding anything…without removing and replacing anything… Reading in the beautiful book “ an inner silence…the portraits of Henry Cartier Bresson,” the introduction by the very great Jean-Luc Nancy , I find the answer to the silence and physical stillness of my portraits…he writes: The true portrait is one in which the person represented is not caught in any action nor does he adopt an expression that deflects from the person himself. H C B says…“ I seek above all an inner silence…I try to translate personality and not an expression…” Here I totally find myself…here is a response to the silence…the stillness…the displacement of the subject, which my portraits produce… It is the mental composition during the shoot that brings them into a futurist-Duchampian dynamic…composition for me obsessive…but they ( the subjects ), are absolutely still and in silence… Intimately I have always sought the words of Jean-Luc Nancy…intimately I have always followed the “ stinging mosquito ” design of H C B…
Mosaico Polaroids
Each polaroid is a fragment that goes to make up the work
Just as reality is composed of various facets so too Galimberti’s works are fractionalized, the image breaks down and recomposes into a mosaic that is a kaleidoscope of emotions and truths. Galimberti already knows how to capture the image he wants to go and make, each of his works is an artistic performance, he makes the work fluidly, one shot after another, no polaroid is out of place and none is ultimately discarded.
Secret Garden
Secret Garden is a project that was born and developed from 2016 to 2018; after taking snapshots of Milan Rome and Paris, Galimberti ventured to the East, to faraway China.
The shots collected in China are different from any other project Galimberti has accustomed us to; very different from his pop portraits and Ghirrian classicism of European cities, Secret Garden is a more intimate work that reveals to us an unexpected poetry and sensitivity. His works rigorously composed of polaroid mosaics are collected like a travelogue, snapshots of the snapshot.
Galimberti breaks down the image by getting to the soul of things; he captures moments suspended in time that will never be repeated and instead multiply in the composition.
Personal and instinctive is the choice of subjects, glimpses, and composition that Galimberti manages to perceive with all his senses.
In these photographs we do not just observe but can also hear the sound of the wind, the muffled silence of the snow, perceive the movement of the falling leaf.
Observing these mosaics is like being catapulted inside the frame of a movie surrounded by its noises and smells that suddenly overwhelm us.
Instinctively we can distinguish two aesthetic strands in his compositions: a series of photography is oriented on natural landscapes, forests and silent snowy expanses.
Then suddenly the whole world tilts, and with plays of colors and shapes here a building becomes a falling leaf in a succession of tilted frames. The second theme, focused on the spirit of construction and renewal, dwells on buildings and construction sites in progress, exploiting geometric patterns to create the rhythm of a multicolored score.
The rapid changes in the tilt of the frame recall those colorful kaleidoscopes we used to amuse ourselves with as children. And here the polaroid also reveals its more playful side by initiating a dance of geometric shapes.
Secret Garden – Jing Fan Studio
Secret Garden – Jing Fan Studio 2
Secret Garden – Poem Wall In The Sky
Secret Garden – Building Ehill
Secret Garden – Prince Sky Town
Secret Garden – Movie Jing Hua Liang
Secret Garden – Demolition in Red E Blu
Prince Village – People In Transfer
Prince Village – Study 1
Garden Secret – Blue Sky Clouds Gondola View
Garden Secret – Studio Light Prince Village
Secret Garden – Red Line In Jing Hua Liang
Garden Secret – Movie Planet White
Secret Garden – Light Planet 3
Secret Garden – Landscape Prince Village Memory
Secret Garden – Light Planet 4
Secret Garden – Winter E Autumn
Secret Garden – 29
Secret Garden – 28
Secret Garden – Prince Sky Town Work In Progress
Garden Secret – Study Flag
Secret Garden – Tribute To China Flag 2
Between 1997 and 1999 he made two important works for the cities of Paris and Lisbon, from here he began his reflection on the importance of being able to tell the story, the music, the experience of a place through images.
In 2003 he dedicated his work to the realization of the volume Viaggio in Italia, edited by Denis Curti, an account of some places in our country through individual polaroids.
In 2006, during his first trip to New York, he begins his research on light, on the energy inspired by this new city, which for the artist becomes the ideal representation of the contemporary world. To this city he will devote a further work in 2010, realizing an important corpus of Single Polaroids and Mosaics, alternating stories of details, images of human intimacy with shots that lend themselves to the study, executed with mathematical rigor, of the different compositional harmonies: expressed in the imposing images of skyscrapers, sky, light, and streets of New York.
New York will be followed by monographic works on other cities such as Berlin, Venice and Naples. He also continues his research toward other ways of representing and contaminating those same realities and the elements that characterize them with which he comes into contact. The desire to make current the things, the objects of the past becomes concrete through the realization of ready-mades, of Duchampian inspiration, which represent a significant part of his production.
At the same time, appreciation grows for his research, for the particular techniques he develops, arousing the interest of interlocutors from different fields. Thanks to these collaborations, new artistic and creative projects are born.
On behalf of the soccer club A.C. Milan, he created a work of portraits called Il Milan del Centenario, which was presented in an exhibition at the Milan Triennale building in March 2000.
With Jaeger LeCoultre, he created the images for the manufacture’s prestigious volume edited by Franco Cologni.
For FIAT Auto he produced the calendar of the same name in 2006 and the volume Viaggio in Italia. New Fiat 500.
For KERAKOLL DESIGN he produced the volume New York Matericomovimentosa.
In collaboration with the Fondazione delle Arti e dei Mestieri Cologni he produced the volume IL FOTOGRAFO, MESTIERE D’ARTE edited by Giuliana Scimè.
For Polaroid he produced the volume MADE IN ITALY journey with Polaroid in 2003.
In October 2009 on the occasion of the reopening of Polaroid he is invited as an official testimonial to the photography fair in Hong Kong , Las Vegas and the Tribeca Film Festival, making portraits performances with Lady Gaga, Chuck Close and Robert de Niro.
In 2010, IMPOSSIBLE, a new brand producer of instant films, dedicated a black-and-white instant film to him entitled IMPOSSIBLE MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI SPECIAL EDITION.
He becomes the protagonist of the monographic documentary MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI, a film belonging to the series “I MAESTRI DELLA FOTOGRAFIA” produced by Giart and distributed by Contrasto.
In 2013 he presented in Venice the project PAESAGGIO ITALIA/ITALYSCAPES, curated by Benedetta Donato, the first anthological exhibition dedicated to the author’s research on landscape from which the publication of the same name published by Marsilio Editori was taken. The exhibition, produced by Giart, became a traveling project, exhibited in various Italian institutional venues and finally in New York.
On the occasion of EXPO2015, he presented the publication entitled Milano by Maurizio Galimberti (MBP Gruppo Editoriale) and the exhibition METAMORFOSI. THE RISING CITY.
Throughout his career, critics and personalities of contemporary culture have written for him, such as: Nicola Piovani, Davide Oldani, Michele De Lucchi, Dario Fo and many others.
On the occasion of the anniversary of the Bologna CNA, he was asked to reinterpret the values of Italian craftsmanship for an installation made with his famous mosaics, which was exhibited in the city center during the summer of 2015.
He regularly gives workshops and Lectio Magistralis on photography.
With the exhibition AriDadaKali Nudi selection 2012-2015, accompanied by the homonymous publication of the series I quaderni da collezione di Maurizio Galimberti n°23, premiered at Studio Giangaleazzo Visconti in Milan, he was chosen as a testimonial for photography as part of the event PARMA360 – Festival of Contemporary Creativity 2016.
In 2015-16-17 he realized a photography project with all the techniques of Instant photography ( Polaroid -Fuji- Impossible project ) on the Cappellone di San Nicola in Tolentino ( Macerata ), the final part of the project is dedicated to the post earthquake of 30/10/2016, with the use of the renewed ( original )Polaroid 50×60 films.
On the occasion of the READY MADE CHRISTO exhibition, 3 Volumes edited by Deodato Arte were produced.
In June 2016 the volume “Portraits” was released, dedicated to his famous portraits published by SilvanaEditoriale.
In December 2016, the volume “ROMA55” was published by SilvanaEditoriale.
In March 2017, the volume “ATELIER PARIS” published by SilvanaEditoriale came out.
In March 2017 he was awarded the prestigious “ARTURO GHERGO” Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 2017 he participated in the 57th Venice Art Biennale[8] ( Venice Pavilion curated by Prof . Stefano Zecchi ).
One of his mosaics was used for the official poster of the “Barcolana di Trieste” 2017.
For Illycaffè in October 2017 he made the Collection of cups and mugs for the prestigious “Illycaffe Art Collection.”
In Città della Pieve he created a beautiful project entitled “Surrealisme Perugino” for Photo Città della Pieve.
In Monza in the splendid setting of the VillaReale he exhibited the exhibition “San Nicola reMade” with the related dedicated volume published by SilvanaEditoriale.
For the year 2018 he is testimonial-ambassador of Fuji Italia / instant photo division.
For the year 2018 he is official-ambassador Illycaffè.
For the Maeson Enrico Coveri in Florence, he created a project called “AROUND ENRICO COVERI” with a dedicated volume.
With Fuji Italia he carried out a major research on flowers, photographed with Fuji Instax Square, published in two volumes produced by Archivio Nordest.
FIAF , on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the founding of FIAF. produced a monographic volume of the series “Great Authors of Italian Photography” with a dedicated anthological exhibition presented in the beautiful setting of the Fortezza del Girifalco in Tortona
He is special consulting of the prestigious photography collection “Luchi Collection” Milan
In January 2019, the volume “Il Cenacolo” edizioni SKIRA Milano came out.
His works are part of prestigious photography collections.