November 2003 - Nr. 11
Helmut Newton donates works to Berlin
TWIG - Since leaving Berlin just before World War II, 83-year old photographer Helmut Newton has spent decades in the limelight, making an artistic name for himself consonant to that of the celebrities he photographs. Now, more than 60 years after he first left Berlin, Newton has announced plans to gift Germany’s capital city the largest collection of his world-class work.
An agreement with Newton was met after five years of negotiations between the artist and the Foundation for Prussian Cultural Property (SPK, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz), where the collection’s location was a deciding factor. The collection will be housed in a former art history library near the city’s Zoologischer Garten train station.
The library was the last thing that Newton saw before fleeing from the city in 1938. "I love this house" Newton is known to have said of the glorious Wilhelmine building, which will also be home to the foundation’s own photography collection.
"With the Newton collection, Berlin — once a center for fashion and photography of international scope — has achieved an important milestone for photography," said Klaus-Dieter Lehman, SPK president.
Newton’s iconic photographs — including many of the female nudes that have occasioned the ire of the women’s groups — will complement the foundation’s permanent collection of early photography in Prussia from 1870 to 1910, and its collection of fashion photography.
Newton’s donation is the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures toward the land of his birth. In 2000, he collaborated with a German publisher to produce a massive retrospective of his photography. The 65-pound, 480 page work "SUMO," was published by the German Taschen Verlag, one of the world’s most prominent art book publishers.
Newton, a naturalized Australian who lives in Monte Carlo and Los Angeles, is the most expensive advertising photographer in the world.
