The unprecedented retrospective dedicated to Oliviero Toscani

"The small successes are mediocre, the great failures are epic. I stand for the magnificent failures" - and again -"Just imagine if I'm wrong, it is that the failures are better, even communism has failed, even Jesus was crucified"

Words of Oliviero Toscani, star of "Oliviero Toscani. Più di 50 anni di magnifici fallimenti" (ndt: Oliviero Toscani. More than 50 years of magnificent failures) a retrospective curated by Nicolas Ballario up until April 28th. At Whitelight Art Gallery, in Viale Lunigiana corner Copernico in Milan, there will be about 400 shots ibetween photography, advertising, art: from "Kiss between a priest and a nun" of '91 which enraged the Vatican to the argued campaign "No - Anorexia" in 2007 with the portait of the French model Isabelle Caro with the body consumed by anorexia, the close-up of an African with two different eyes  quoted by Bowie in "Black Tie White Noise?" to "Three Hearts White / Black / Yellow" in 1996. Son of a photojournalist of Corriere della Sera, after studying photography at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich, Oliviero breaks out in the seventies with the famous picture of the Jordan Women sit in Jesus Jeans under the slogan "Chi mi ama, mi segua" (Pier Paolo Pasolini emphasizes its expressive potential) and continues with the biggest glossy magazines as Harpes's Bazzar and Vogue. Lucky is the collaboration with Fiorucci, but iconic are the one ft. Benetton that began in the 80s. Together the couple reinvents the way to advertise turning it into a means to talk about the problems of the world: racism, hunger, death penalty, AIDS, religion, sex, war, violence. This are new images, hypnotic and often shocking that marked art history and consciousness of many.

To discover his work: "Oliviero Toscani. Più di 50 anni di magnifici fallimenti" at Whitelight Art Gallery, in Viale Lunigiana corner Copernicus in Milan, until 28 April.