Oliviero Toscani, an Italian photographer who used photographs of an AIDS affected person and loss of life row inmates to interrupt the boundaries of style imagery because the artistic mastermind of Benetton’s promoting campaigns, died on Monday. He was 82.
His loss of life was introduced by his household on Instagram. They didn’t say the place he died or cite a reason behind loss of life, however in August Mr. Toscani told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that he had been identified with amyloidosis, a uncommon and incurable situation in which there’s a buildup of protein.
His shock-and-awe campaigns within the Eighties and ’90s helped flip Benetton from a small Italian model into a world style powerhouse, with provocative ads that blurred the strains between advertising and marketing and activism, excessive artwork and shopper trade.
In a single advert, an AIDS affected person lay on his again, his mouth open, his arms curled on his chest. His darkish eyes stared previous his household, who had gathered round his deathbed. The affected person, David Kirby, looked almost Christ-like.
And there, close to the underside proper, a few words hung in a green box: “United Colours of Benetton.”
The commercial, which ran within the Nineties, was probably the most provocative and divisive in latest style historical past, prompting livid debates over whether or not Benetton, and Mr. Toscani, had been creating artwork, partaking in advocacy or exploiting the epidemic to promote its garments.
Notably, Mr. Toscani had the Kirby family’s permission to make use of a colorized model of the picture, which was shot in 1990 by the photographer Therese Frare. The Kirbys stated the marketing campaign had helped broaden consciousness about AIDS.
“Benetton didn’t use us, or exploit us,” the Kirby household stated, sustaining that this was a means for his or her son’s portrait to be “seen all around the world, and that’s precisely what David needed.”
Mr. Toscani’s advertisements had been typically socially progressive, with photographs of racially numerous and homosexual households. They had been additionally meant to shock. He used photos of horses copulating. He used the bloodstained uniform of a soldier killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. One advert featured actors dressed as a priest and a nun kissing.
“Promoting businesses make tens of millions by repeating the identical outdated factor,” he told The New York Occasions in 1995, including, “We attempt to go one other means.”
Mr. Toscani generally crossed the road even for Benetton. He joined the corporate in 1982 and left in 2000 amid an uproar over an advert marketing campaign that featured images of death row inmates throughout the USA.
He returned as artistic director in 2017. However his profession at Benetton got here to an finish in 2020, not due to the calculated and daring dangers he had taken in pictures and promoting, wherein he delighted in his broadside challenges to standard concepts of respectability. Relatively, it was due to an offhand remark he made in a radio interview a few bridge collapse in Italy wherein greater than 40 folks died. “Who cares {that a} bridge collapsed?” he had stated. Although he apologized, Benetton fired him.
Italian politicians and creative leaders honored him in social media tributes on Monday. The designer Valentino Garavani, the creator of Valentino, called him “a visionary who challenged the world via his lens.” The designer Giorgio Armani wrote that “the directness and visible affect of his language set a typical.”
Oliviero Toscani was born in Milan on Feb. 28, 1942. He adopted within the footsteps of his father, Fedele Toscani, a photojournalist. Mr. Toscani skilled on the Zurich Faculty of Utilized Arts and labored as a designer earlier than he joined the Benetton Group as artwork director in 1982.
His survivors embrace his spouse, Kirsti Moseng Toscani, and their three kids, Rocco, Lola and Ali. Mr. Toscani was married twice earlier than and had three different kids. Full data on survivors was not instantly obtainable.
In his closing months, Mr. Toscani informed the Corriere della Sera that he had misplaced weight whereas being handled for amyloidosis and that his sense of style had declined. Wine tasted completely different to him, he stated. “I’m not curious about dwelling like this,” he added.
However in September, he traveled to the Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich for a major retrospective of his work known as “Oliviero Toscani: Images and Provocation.” It closed simply over every week earlier than he died.
“I’ve discovered that promoting is the richest and strongest medium present at present,” he told The Occasions in 1991. “So I really feel accountable to do greater than to say, ‘Our sweater is fairly.’”
Elisabetta Povoledo and Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed reporting.
