Erwin Blumenfeld
"A passion for Beauty"

Erwin Blumenfeld is without doubt one of this century's most famous fashion photographers. His life story is as multi-facetted as his art. Born in 1897 in Berlin, of Jewish origin, he was an ambulance driver in the German army during the First World War. At the end of the hostilities, he settled in Amsterdam where he started in business, but it was not until 1932 that he really began his career in photography. In 1936, he moved to Paris, and started to work there for Vogue Magazine in 1938. In 1939, he spent several weeks as Paris correspondent for Harper's Bazaar, but the war soon put an end to this. He was sent to a concentration camp in France before being able to leave for the United States, having been granted a visa. Once in New York he worked for Harper's Bazaar again, and in 1943 opened his first studio. Over the following decades he was to become both financially successful and very famous.

Although he is best known as a fashion photographer, Erwin Blumenfeld never lost touch with an artistically avant-garde period between 1915 and 1930 when he witnessed innovations that were to influence his development, in terms of both artistic and applied photography. In his youth, he took his inspiration from expressionism and the Dada movement. He also produced paintings, drawings, collages, poems and prose in an experimental and anti-conformist style. This exhibition highlights a wide selection of works which, though they are less well-known, are fundamental from the point of view of the photographer's artistic development and illustrate his constant quest for new ideas.

The first large retrospective of Blumenfeld's work, it focuses on the four major capitals in which he lived and which contributed to the development of his talent: Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris and New York. It comprises a varied selection of more than 250 pieces, and reflects all the different styles in which he worked: portraits, nudes, landscapes and architecture.

This exhibition was designed by William Ewing, Director of the Elysée Museum in Lausanne, and organised by the Barbican Art Gallery in London.