EXHIBITION:
SAUL LEITER
AN UNFINISHED WORLD
19/07/2024 – 10/11/2024
Curator: Anne Morin
Saul Leiter’s poetic landscape floods Sala Artegunea with images under the title of An Unfinished World. A visual poet, not of decisive moments, but of incisive ones, his work is heterogeneous, unclassifiable and extremely dense, encompassing not only photography, but also painting.
This exhibition, curated by Anne Morin from diChroma photography, presents more than 200 original photographs – most of these in black and white, but also in colour – some forty paintings, a projection of colour photographs and also documents, magazines, notebooks and cameras that once belonged to Saul Leiter.
The exhibition layout has been designed as an endless landscape that echoes Saul Leiter’s gesture as a painter, a gesture that speaks of expanse, of a space without limits, without a horizon. Leiter’s world stretches, unfolds and expands. This linearity is interrupted by a temporal contraction generated by small assemblages, small montages, “instant” arrangements that correspond more to photographic temporality, to the decisive moment of the found image. This temporal unfolding is the guiding thread that accompanies visitors throughout the exhibition and leads them to its centre, which is Leiter’s bedroom, the place where he created his series entitled In My Room.
In my Roomis the heart of Saul Leiter’s work, the centrepiece of the exhibition. It is the only series to which Leiter gave a title, and, at the same time, it is the only neuralgic point, the only impulse, the only spatial and temporal contraction of this vast expanse that is his work. It is a central place, the secret place of freedom, a freedom without limits that belongs entirely to him. These are black-and-white photographs – none in colour – that Leiter would return to in order to paint them, to cover them, to erase their faces and bodies with colour and plain backgrounds. Visitors can discover a set of 40 very small format works.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER:
SAUL LEITER (Pittsburgh, EE. UU., 1923 – New York, EE.UU., 2013)
Saul Leiter was a painter and photographer. He was born in Pittsburgh to a practising Jewish family. His father, Wolf, was an Orthodox rabbi of Polish origin, a scholar and polyglot, a respected eminent man in his community. His mother, Regina, born in Austria, was in charge of raising their four children: three boys and a girl, who was Saul’s first model. As for the three boys, their destiny was marked by family inertia and the plan was that they would become rabbis, following in the footsteps of their father and grandfather, making their Jewishness their profession. This was the first battle that young Leiter had to fight against intransigent, oppressive paternal authority. He turned this imposition into a true value, as this fact would explain many things later, especially the persistent imprint of Judaism in his work.
The young Leiter moved to New York in 1946, fleeing from this seemingly overly oppressive family situation. He was 23 years old and lived in extremely precarious conditions. Material difficulties failed to frighten someone who had just lost everything. He became a kind of underground figure, underground in his own life, as if he were living in a period of extra time, escaping what for him meant a death sentence. This probably explains the fact that Leiter chose not to be part of any community, any artistic, political or social group. If one had to identify Leiter with a group because of his manner of being, it would be with the Beat Generation, the permanent quest for freedom. Leiter was a free wanderer all his life, compiling small fragments of an unfinished world.
Leiter began photographing in colour in 1948, publishing some of his images in magazines such as LIFE from 1951 and exhibiting his paintings regularly at the Tanager Gallery from the following year.
Edward Steichen, then curator at MoMA, included some colour photographs by Saul Leiter in a group exhibition that was entitled Always the Young Strangersin 1953, and four years later, he showed some twenty colour slides by Leiter in his lecture “Experimental Photography in Colour” at MoMA. Saul Leiter was immediately associated with colour photography during this time, beginning in the 1950s, which unfortunately would contribute to overshadowing all of his black-and-white production, testimony to a richness as surprising as that of his colour work.
Leiter initially collaborated with Harpers’ Bazaar, then with Elle, Vogue and LIFE. He retired from the world of fashion photography at the end of the 1970s, later claiming that he was never fully a part of it, perhaps because he was always a creator against the grain, an artist on the margins with a certain difficulty in fully adapting to the world in which he lived. His career gradually faded.
In 1992, he participated in an exhibition organised by Jane Livingston that brought together works by sixteen photographers from the New York School (an extension of the Photo League) between 1936 and 1963: Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Alexey Brodovitch, Ted Croner, Bruce Davidson, Don Donaghy, Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, Sid Grossman, William Klein, Saul Leiter, Leon Levinstein, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, David Vestal and Weegee (pseudonym of Arthur H. Fellig). Howard Greenberg, the great gallery owner specialising in photography, saw this exhibition and decided to represent Leiter, who would exhibit in his gallery the following year. This is how Saul Leiter received belated international recognition.
In 2006, Steidl published his first monograph, and it could be said that his work thereafter began to have a visibility that would grow over the last twenty years. He received belated international recognition. He died in 2013, just as this recognition was beginning to grow.
MEDIATION:
GUIDED TOURS:
At 5.30 pm in Basque and 6.30 pm in Spanish
Free admision with prior booking:: T 943 251937 in the Gallery, or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
FAMILY WORKSHOPS
Portrait workshop as part of the Beleari so programme to foster a critical look at questions related to the image and visual narrative.
Saturday 5 October 2024 | from 5 pm to 6.30 pm
Children aged between 6 and 12 accompanied by an adult
Basque | 5 euros per child. Free for adults | Prior booking on the website..
Prior booking | on this website.
Portraits, Things That Are Hidden workshop with Inés Bermejo
Saturday 19 October 2024 | from 11.30 am to 1 pm
Children aged between 6 and 12 accompanied by an adult
Basque | 5 euros per child. Free for adults | .
Prior booking | on this website.
PUBLIC PROGRAMME
.jpg)
Talk
Guided tour with Gloria Crespo MacLennan, writer and photo editor.
Wednesday 2 October | 6.30 pm
Spanish | Free Prior booking | on the website.
Dialogues
Dialogues with Saul Leiter. An Unfinished World, Tabakalera movie theatre (1st floor)
This activity has been organised in collaboration with Tabakalera
Thursday 3 October | 7 pm
Screening of the film In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter
Tomas Leach, USA, 2013, original with Spanish subtitles, 75’
Presented by Gloria Crespo MacLennan, writer and photo editor
Thursday 10 October | 7 pm
Screening of the film Revolutionary Road
Sam Mendes, USA, 2008, original with Spanish subtitles, 113’
Ticket sales at Tabakalera’s usual outlets
A Rainy Afternoon in a Photo by Saul Leiter film talk
with Oskar Alegria
Thursday 31 October | 6.30 pm, Sala Artegunea
Basque| Free Prior booking | on the website.
GUIDE OF EXHIBITION:
Download here the exhibition guide:
 |
 |
 |
 |
@arteguneakutxa