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Alberto Giacometti in his Parisian studio in 1954. In the background, the wooden carcass of a piece of furniture filled with work materials. The sculptor is placed right in the foreground, looking sceptically towards the photographer. Arnold Newman (1918 – 2006), who made this masterwork, is one of the most influential portrait photographers of the 20^th century. Quite early on he developed his style, which became known as «environmental portraiture». The environment, the architecture and the atmosphere in which he photographed his models are not just decoration, instead they emphasise the character and personality of the subject.

In the exhibition of around 30 photographs, ArteF Fine Art Photography Gallery present portraits of famous artists and other celebrities, for example Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Roy Lichtenstein, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Ed Ruscha, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz as well as I.M. Pei and Bill Clinton. For example, we see Igor Stravinsky sitting at his monumental grand piano, his head resting pensively on his hand. It is not the well-known composer occupying the centre of the picture, rather the open instrument, which dominates the space as an abstract form.

«Originally I wanted to be a painter. It was my dream to express everything I had to say in a single image – my thoughts and feelings, my opinions about people, my interest in nature». Arnold Newman is unrivalled in achieving exactly this. Our memories of celebrities of the last century have been decisively shaped by his images.

Arnold Newman was born in 1918 in New York City, the second of three sons to Isidor and Freda Newman. He grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Due to his parents’ financial difficulties, he was forced to break off his art studies at the University of Miami and take a job in a portrait studio in Philadelphia. It was here that he began to take photographs in his spare time. In 1939 Newman mad e the acquaintance of Alfred Stieglitz and in 1941 he exhibited his photographs for the first time at the A.D. Gallery in New York. The Museum of Modern Art acquired several copies from this exhibition. A solo exhibition followed in 1945 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the museum bought up all the exhibits for its collection. In the following decades Arnold Newman regularly took photographs for well-known newspapers and magazines such as Harpers Bazaar, Fortune, LIFE and The New York Times. In 1954 he took his first trip to Europe, where he was introduced to the Parisian art world and made portraits of many artist celebrities.  Numerous exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world confirmed his successful career.

In 2004 Newman received the highest commendation of the English Royal Photography Society and in 2006 he was awarded the Gold Medal for Portraiture from the National Art Club of America. Arnold Newman died on June 6, 2006, in New York.