Museum Schloss Moyland honours the work of the important photographer Alice Springs and presents works that are being exhibited for the first time as part of this major retrospective. They are in dialogue with works by the Franco-German photographer Willy Maywald from the museum’s collection, some of which have never been exhibited before.
Image above: Alice Springs, Advertisement for Jean Louis David, Paris 1970s © Helmut Newton Foundation
Last year, June Newton, aka Alice Springs, would have celebrated her 100th birthday. Alice Springs (1923-2021) worked as a photographer from 1970 and left behind an impressive body of work that made her one of the most important fashion and portrait photographers of her time. Her own oeuvre began with an extraordinary coincidence: when her husband, the famous photographer Helmut Newton, was unable to fulfil a photo assignment in Paris in 1970 due to the flu, June Newton had him explain to her how to use the camera and light meter. In his place, she photographed an advertising image for the French cigarette brand Gitanes. The portrait of the smoking model was the starting signal for a successful career as a photographer.
In cooperation with the Helmut Newton Foundation and the Opelvillen Rüsselsheim, Museum Schloss Moyland is showing around 200 vintage prints and exhibition prints. From intimate portraits to style-defining fashion shots, the exhibition offers a deep insight into the work of a woman who has had a decisive influence on photography.
Special highlights of the Alice Springs exhibition are photographs that have never been shown until recently. These works were discovered in 2023 in the former flat of the Newton couple in Monaco and offer a new, fascinating insight into the work of Alice Springs and add valuable new facets to the already well-known oeuvre. The list of artists, actors and musicians portrayed by Alice Springs reads like a who’s who of the international cultural scene from the past forty years on both sides of the Atlantic.
The exhibition at Museum Schloss Moyland focuses in particular on Springs’ portraits of artists including Joseph Beuys, Peter Hujar, Niki de Saint Phalle and Gerhard Richter. She has also photographed fashion designers such as Vivien Westwood, Karl Lagerfeld and the actresses Fanny Ardant, Catherine Deneuve, Angelica Houston and Charlotte Rampling. Springs’ sensitive portraits get close to people, vividly reflecting their personalities and revealing something of her models’ inner feelings. Over the course of time, she has often turned the camera on herself and recorded her own moods and the changes in her face and body. In general, the moment of recollection, the fleeting, captured moment, is an essential feature of Springs’ photography.
Willy Maywald: Artists at home – Les artistes chez eux
Parallel to the Alice Springs exhibition, Museum Schloss Moyland is presenting another exhibition with works by the renowned Franco-German photographer Willy Maywald (1907-1985). Maywald, who came from Kleve, the immediate neighbourhood of Schloss Moyland, is known for his outstanding portraits of artists from the 1940s to the 1980s. A self-confessed homosexual, Kleve quickly became too small for him and he soon moved to Paris – after stopovers in Krefeld and Berlin – where he became famous for photographing the works of well-known fashion designers such as Christian Dior, Jacques Fath and Balenciaga. These works complement the Alice Springs exhibition and offer visitors the opportunity to compare two different approaches to portrait photography.
The exhibition takes a vivid look at the renowned fashion photographer and his work in Paris, where he spent the majority of his life and lived permanently after the Second World War. Even before the war, his photographs were published in magazines such as Vogue and Verve. In Paris, he made contacts with artists such as Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Maywald’s portraits capture not only the outward appearance but also the personality of the artists. He heightened the tension in his photographs by skilfully playing with light and shadow.
He was one of the first photographers to discover the studio as a central pictorial motif and reflected on personal experiences in his autobiography “The Splinters of the Mirror” (1985). The exhibition offers an insight into the photographer’s world of thought and visitors can get to know the artists portrayed in a personal, very individual way.
The van der Grinten brothers donated their art collection, including Maywald’s photographs, to Museum Schloss Moyland, where many of these works are being shown for the first time.
WHEN?
Alice Springs: Retrospective
Opening: Sunday, 15. September 2024, 2 pm
Exhibition dates: Sunday, 15. September 2024 to Sunday, 2. February 2025
Willy Maywald: The artists at home – Les artistes chez eux
Opening: Thursday, 31. July 2024, 7 pm
Exhibition dates: Thursday, 31. 2024 to Sunday, 2. February 2025
WHERE?
Museum Schloss Moyland
At the castle 4
47551 Bedburg-Hau
