As the largest retrospective ever organized in Italy dedicated to Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), the enfant terrible of the French twentieth-century art scene, the exhibition gathers loans from prestigious public institutions and private collections. It highlights in 150 works - drawings, graphics, jewelry, tapestries, historical documents, books, magazines, photographs, documentaries, and films directed by Cocteau - the innovative visual aspects of his oeuvre.
Poet, novelist, playwright, and critic, Cocteau was also a gifted and highly original draftsman, graphic artist, muralist, fashion-jewelry-and-textile designer, and filmmaker. Due to his eclectic nature, he could easily be described as a modern-age “Renaissance man” whose extraordinary versatility left an indelible mark on twentieth-century art.
His circle included such artists as Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel, Sergei Diaghilev, Edith Piaf, Pablo Picasso, and Tristan Tzara. However, the frank assertion of his homosexuality and the opium addiction he never attempted to conceal, means he occupied a precarious position within the avant-garde. A man of the French establishment yet also subversive of it, Cocteau embodied the cultural, social, and political contradictions of his age.
Philippe Halsman, Jean Cocteau, New York, 1949
