Grace and harmony in Horst P. Horst’s photographs on display in Venice

Words

from MArte

by the Editorial Team

Horst P. Horst’s photographs, which will be on display at Le Stanze della Fotografia on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice from 21 February 2026, are not just about fashion. Curated by Anne Morin in collaboration with Denis Curti, the exhibition traces the famous photographer’s career from an original perspective.

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“For Horst, geometry is a cultured game that he never stopped reinventing and reformulating in his work. Whether drawings, colour or black and white photographs, or collages, each of his images was conceived as an architecture, an equation, a unit in its own right”. With these words, curator Anne Morin outlines the cornerstones of the language of one of the masters of photography of the last century, at the centre of the exhibition Horst P. Horst. The Geometry of Grace, scheduled at Le Stanze della Fotografia in Venice from 21 February to 5 July 2026. More than three hundred works – many of them presented for the first time – including colour photographs displayed alongside vintage prints, drawings, documents and unpublished material, retrace the history of Horst P. Horst – born Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann –, offering a comprehensive overview of his work.
Since his early days, Horst showed a keen interest in shapes, proportions and geometry. As an architecture student in Hamburg and Paris, he collaborated with Le Corbusier and absorbed not only the lesson of the Bauhaus, but also that of classicism, translating them into photographs constructed as authentic visual architectures. It is no coincidence that co-curator Denis Curti describes him as “an architect of style whose vision shaped the aesthetics of fashion and elegance in the 20th century”.
In addition to the famous photographs published on Vogue – with which he collaborated from 1931 onwards – Horst chose flowers and still life as his subjects, but also the figures who populated his life and imagination – Cecil Beaton, Ingrid Bergman, Maria Callas, Coco Chanel, Salvador Dalí, Marlene Dietrich, Karl Lagerfeld, Irving Penn, Yves Saint Laurent, Gianni Versace, Luchino Visconti and Diana Vreeland, to name a few. Regardless of the subject, however, the search for balance and attention to geometric harmony were a constant feature, allowing the author to succeed thanks to an approach in which timelessness and the present coexist. As Curti points out, “his photographs of architectural elements, landscapes, still life, flowers, geometries, drawings, projects, contact sheets, cuts and final choices are all experiments aimed at seeking a balance that is not only formal but also reflects the contradictions of contemporary life”.
On the occasion of the exhibition at Le Stanze della Fotografia, the free open call for talented photographers under 30 is back: until 1st February 2026, participants can submit three photos inspired by the photographer’s statement: “Fashion is an expression of the times. Elegance is something else”. The works submitted will be evaluated by a jury composed of Anne Morin, Denis Curti, Gert Elfering, owner of the Horst P. Horst Estate, Francesca Malgara, artistic director of MIA Photo Fair, and Francesca Marani, Senior Photo Editor of Vogue Italia. The jury will select four to six finalists, whose names will be announced during the press conference presenting the exhibition on 20th February 2026. The selected photographs will be exhibited at Le Stanze della Fotografia for the duration of the exhibition and also at Le Stanze della Fotografia stand at the MIA Photo Fair in Milan, from 19 to 22 March 2026. Visitors to the fair will be able to vote for the finalists and, at the end of the event, the three winners will be announced, whose photographs, exhibited at Le Stanze della Fotografia, will be marked with a plaque.