MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

wed 11 June 2025
Live auction 1357
19

Irving Penn
(Plainfield, 1917)

IRVING PENN

€ 6.000 / 10.000
Estimate

IRVING PENN

(Plainfield 1917 - New York 2006)

Italian Intellectuals at Rome's Caffè Greco

October 12, 1948

vintage gelatin silver print on carton original

34x25 cm

signed and dated lower right "Irving Penn Rome 1948"

on the reverse stamp Copyright Conde Nast Publications Inc.

 

Famous picture taken by Irving Penn at Caffè Greco, Rome 1948. From left to right: Aldo Palazzeschi, Goffredo Petrassi, Mirko, Carlo Levi, Pericle Fazzini (standing), Afro, Renzo Vespignani, Libero de Libero, Sandro Penna (standing, at the back on the right), Lea Padovani, Orson Welles, Mario Mafai, Ennio Flaiano, Vitaliano Brancati, and Orfeo Tamburi (in the center).

 

Literature references

Irving Penn, Moment Preserved:Eight Essays in Photographs and Words, 1960

M. Onofri, Il poeta del desiderio, in L'Unità, Cultura e Società, May 20, 1997, p. 3

B. Sauders, But First, Coffee: Caffè Greco and the Beginnings of Italian Photography, 20 July 2017