Frank Horvat preserved beauty before it faded: The Italian photographer, who found his home in France, discovered the special moments of the fashion and everyday world in Paris, which he captured with a unique sense of aesthetics in numerous iconic images.
(...) Continue readingFrank Horvat - Studies in Milan; travels through Europe and Asia
Frank Horvat was born on 28th April 1928 in Abbazia (now Opatija, Croatia). The son of a doctor, he went to primary school in Milan, Italy, but was forced to flee with his Jewish family to Lugano in Switzerland in 1939 to escape the horrors of the Second World War, where he was at least able to attend grammar school. Horvat developed a passion for photography early on and bought his first camera with his own money in 1945. In 1948, he began studying at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. Horvat was a cosmopolitan and lived in several countries, including Italy, Switzerland, England, the USA, Pakistan and India, before finally settling in France in 1955. There, Horvat realised that the actual atmosphere in the streets of the French capital and cultural metropolis was very different from the romantic visions he had found among the so-called humanist photographers.
An avant-garde approach to fashion photography
Frank Horvat began his career as a photojournalist in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Henri Cartier-Bresson and replaced his Rollei camera with a Leica model on his advice. He travelled across Asia for two years, and the photographs he took during this trip were soon to be seen in widely read magazines such as Life, Match, Picture Post, Die Woche and Revue; his picture of a veiled Indian bride, her face reflected in a mirror in her lap, was selected by Edward Steichen for his famous exhibition The Family of Man and thus became known to an international audience of millions. In 1959, Horvat became a member of the renowned Magnum photo agency for three years before finally turning to avant-garde fashion photography, with great success, choosing in the process an intellectual approach that differed significantly from the industry standards of the time. Because the overall aesthetic impression of his pictures was more important to him than the perfect presentation of the fashion, there was often tension with the editors responsible.
Magical moments in iconic black and white images
Frank Horvat refused to document the horror and misery of wars and other disasters. He explained that he did not feel up to the challenge as a photographer. In retrospect, however, he admitted that he had only taken on many commissions from the fashion industry for financial reasons. Nevertheless, he always managed to achieve special photographic milestones, with iconic images such as the shot of the Eiffel Tower behind a pair of high heels. He preferred to photograph in black and white, with occasional forays into colour photography mostly due to economic interests, as colour pictures paid more. In the 1980s, Horvat stopped taking fashion photographs, partly because the commissions increasingly dried up due to his reputation as a difficult artist. He went on to explore essential human themes such as love and death with new artistic freedom and also explored the emerging possibilities of digital photography; however, he was sceptical about subsequent image editing with Photoshop. He preferred to create his impressive effects himself through skilful lighting and a clever choice of perspective.
Frank Horvat died on 21st October 2020.
Frank Horvat - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
