ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE
Lisa Lyon, 1982
20 in. x 16 in. / 50.8 cm. x 40.64 cm.
Gelatin silver print
Edition 7/10
Known for his vast, provocative, and powerful body of work, Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. He was born in 1946 in Floral Park, Queens, and in 1963 enrolled at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to study drawing, painting, and sculpture.
In 1973, the Light Gallery in New York City mounted his first solo gallery exhibition, Polaroids. Two years later he acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and began photographing his circle of friends and acquaintances—artists, musicians, socialites, film stars, and members of the S&M underground. He also worked on commercial projects, creating iconic album cover art, and a series of portraits and party pictures for Interview magazine.
Mapplethorpe met Lisa Lyon, the first World Women’s Bodybuilding Champion, in 1980. They went on to collaborate on a series of portraits and figure studies, a film, and the book, Lady: Lisa Lyon. Throughout the 1980s he produced images that both challenged and adhered to classical aesthetic standards, including stylized compositions of male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and studio portraits of artists and celebrities.
In 1986 he was diagnosed with AIDS. Despite his illness, he accelerated his creative efforts and accepted increasingly challenging commissions. The Whitney Museum of American Art mounted his first major American museum retrospective in 1988, one year before his death in 1989.
Mapplethorpe is represented by galleries in North and South America, Europe and Asia and his work can be found in the collections of major museums around the world. Beyond the art-historical and social significance of his work, his legacy lives on through the work of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. He established the Foundation in 1988 to support photography at the institutional level, including exhibitions, publications and acquisitions, and to fund medical research in the fight against AIDS and HIV.
© The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, used by permission.
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