MULAS, Ugo (Pozzolengo, 1928 - Milano, 1973),New York: Arte e Persone

Design by Michele Provinciali. Printed by Stabilimenti di Arti Grafiche Alfieri & Lacroix - Milan. Blind case

In more than 500 black-and-white photographs, Ugo Mulas has perfectly captured the environment and habitat of such diverse artists (Marcel Duchamp, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Larry Poons, Kenneth Noland, John Chamberlain, Jim Dine, Frank Stella, Lee Bontecou, George Segal, Jim Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol) who made New York the hub and axis of the world. A number of artists like Jasper Johns and Kenneth Noland had never before allowed a photographer to portray them at work, and we find here for the first time a documentation of their activity. Solomon and Mulas have given us a magnificent intimate photographic study of the scene created by some of the most productive members of the new American microcosm, the New York art world (from the facing of the dust jacket).

"This book is a photographic documentation of a long moment in the history of contemporary American art. It describes where painting and scltura stand in New York City among members of the younger generation, as Ugo Mulas saw them during three lunge visits he made within a year, arriving in New York from Milan, where he lives. His itinerary seemed exceptional. For Mulas, this was a voyage of discovery, provoked by his contact with the new American art at the 1964 Venice Biennale [...] Mulas did not speak English, most of the artists did not speak Italian or at best knew a little French. But Mulas brought with him something that they understood very well: an incredible quickness of eye and a ready sensitivity, unparalleled in my experience, to things that were completely unknown to them" (from Solomon's opening text).

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