Curated by Julie Jones, Chloé Goualc’h, Stéphanie Rivoire

An exhibition conceived and realised by Centre Pompidou, Paris, in collaboration with Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana

The recently renovated spaces of Palazzo Reali are the setting for the exhibition of the work of photographers Harry Shunk and János Kender, who created an invaluable record of the world of avant-garde art and its most famous representatives – Andy Warhol, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Yves Klein, Daniel Spoerri, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely – in Paris and New York. The exhibition features 450 original photographs and documents that have been selected from among the 10,000 donated by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in 2014, now held in the Bibliotèque Kandinsky in Paris. The photos shown are grouped in sections titled “Intimities”, “The Body in Action” and “New Spaces” and plunge viewers into the art scene between the late 1950s and early ’70s, a period in which artists were especially interested in experimentalism and sexual and artistic freedom, while also on the constant look-out for alternative spaces in which to create and show their work. Shunk and Kender were onlookers but also artists and authors of their time: images have a dual nature in that they offer important documentation while also being photographic works in themselves.