Nickolas Muray

Renowned as the most successful portrait and fashion photographer of New York in the 1920s, American-Hungarian photographer Nickolas Muray (1892-1965) revolutionized photography with his use of natural color photography in advertising in the 1930s. For the first time ever, Muray’s photographs was at Pera Museum.

Curated by Salomon Grimberg, the exhibition brought together Nickolas Muray’s photographs in a retrospective. Garnered from George Eastman House, the famous photography archive in the US, the Nickolas Muray Archive, which is under the direction of the Muray family, and various private collections, this selection summarized Muray’s career, covering nearly 50 years.

Besides Muray’s black-and-whites, the exhibition presented some of the color photographs that made him famous in Hollywood circles and the American advertising industry.

Muray has photographed many famous actors, dancers, artists, and writers, from Greta Garbo to Marilyn Monroe, from Elizabeth Taylor to Martha Graham; he is also known for the first color photographs he took for famous brands such as Lucky Strike, Coca Cola, and General Foods. Published regularly in some of the most prominent magazines of his time like The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Dance, Shadowland, and Theater, these photographs are accompanied by the artist’s portraits of Frida Kahlo, his great love.

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