Expatica news

Lesser-known Mapplethorpe on display in Madrid

12 December 2007

MADRID – On Thursday the Madrid gallery Pepe Cobo (C/ Fortuny 39) will raise the curtain on Vanitas, an exhibition of 36 photographs by the New York artist Robert Mapplethorpe, which will be on display until the end of January.

Cobo himself says Vanitas exhibits a wide range of works by the artist that highlight his lesser-known side. "Aside from the nude stereotype," Cobo explains, "Mapplethorpe’s world was very wide, and what I am interested in… is to show his other face – within his sexual imagery – but more reflected in objects."

The show’s photographs include the artist’s classic full-frontal nudes, as well as objects such as a slice of bread or an eggplant, and pictures he took of statues on a 1983 trip to Naples.

Mapplethorpe, who started photographing his friends, artists and socialites in the 1970s, became a controversial figure due to the graphic and erotic pictures he took of the New York’s homosexual and pornographic underground. He died in 1989.

[Copyright EL PAÍS, SL. 2007]

Subject: Spanish news