Ugo Mulas, Pozzolengo 1928 - 1973 Milan

Ugo Mulas was one of the most important international postwar photographers. Self-taught, his career unfolded in close contact with the artistic and cultural scene in Milan. Mulas photographed the Venice Biennale exhibitions from 1954 to 1972, working in close contact with the artists. His most outstanding projects include his series on Lucio Fontana in 1964 and the reportage on the Sculture nelle città exhibition in Spoleto in 1962, where he met the artists David Smith and Alexander Calder. The series devoted to Ossi di sepia, the collection of poems by Eugenio Montale, also dates from this period. Having discovered Pop Art at the Venice Biennale in 1964, Mulas decided to go to the United States (1964–67), where he created a book titled New York: The New Art Scene (1967). His meetings with Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, and the discovery of the photographic works of Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander, helped bring about a change in his work in the 1960s, when he moved away from traditional reportage.

Mulas brought about a profound reshaping of the historical function of photograpy: his aesthetic and phenomenological reflections led to a portfolio on Marcel Duchamp (1972) and to the Archivio per Milano project (1969–72). His last work, Verifiche (1968–72), sums up his experience and interaction with the art world. Mulas died on 2 March 1973, one month before the opening of a retrospective exhibition at the University of Parma and the publication of his book La fotografia.