Milton Gendel (December 16, 1918 – October 11, 2018) was an American photographer and art critic who worked for most of his career in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

Biography

Gendel was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, New York in December 1918 but lived in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

from 1949 on. As a correspondent for ''

ARTnews ''ARTnews'' is an American visual-arts magazine, based in New York City. It covers art from ancient to contemporary times. ARTnews is the oldest and most widely distributed art magazine in the world. It has a readership of 180,000 in 124 countr ...

'', he wrote articles about Italian artists such as Alberto Burri and Toti Scialoja. Gendel's photographs capture artists and intellectuals against the background of the transformation of Italy during the postwar economic boom. He was an associate of André Breton during his time in New York.Milton Gendel: A Surreal Life, ed. Peter Benson Miller, Barbara Drudi, Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2011 In 1945-46, while stationed in China with the United States Army, he captured the tumultuous period between the Japanese surrender and the advent of civil war that brought the Communists to power. Gendel's work was the subject of dual retrospective exhibitions at the Museo Carlo Bilotti and the

American Academy in Rome The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome. The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. History In 1893, a group of American architects, ...

in 2011. He had his first American exhibition in New York in 2008. Photographs and diaries from Gendel's time in Rome were published in the 2022 book ''Just Passing Through: A Seven-Decade Roman Holiday'', edited by

Cullen Murphy John Cullen Murphy, Jr. (born September 1, 1952) is an American writer, journalist and editor who was managing editor of ''The Atlantic'' magazine from 1985 to 2006. He was born in New Rochelle, New York, in 1952, a son of illustrator and cartoon ...

. Gendel died in Rome in October 2018, two months shy of his 100th birthday. He had married Judith Venetia (1923–1972), daughter of politician

Edwin Montagu Edwin Samuel Montagu PC (6 February 1879 – 15 November 1924) was a British Liberal politician who served as Secretary of State for India between 1917 and 1922. Montagu was a "radical" Liberal and the third practising Jew (after Sir Herbe ...

and Venetia, daughter of

Edward Stanley, 4th Baron Stanley of Alderley Edward Lyulph Stanley, 4th Baron Sheffield, 4th Baron Stanley of Alderley and 3rd Baron Eddisbury PC (16 May 1839 – 18 March 1925) was an English peer. Life He was the son of Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley, and the former Hen ...

, in 1962; they had a daughter, Anna, whose godmother was Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon.Burke's Peerage, 2003, vol. 3, p. 3836

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gendel, Milton 1918 births 2018 deaths American art critics American emigrants to Italy American photographers United States Army personnel of World War II People from New York City