Oliviero Toscani, an Italian photographer who used photos of an AIDS affected person and demise row inmates to interrupt the boundaries of style imagery because the inventive mastermind of Benetton’s promoting campaigns, died on Monday. He was 82.
His demise was introduced by his household on Instagram. They didn’t say the place he died or cite a reason behind demise, however in August Mr. Toscani advised 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 worldwide style powerhouse, with provocative commercials that blurred the traces between advertising and activism, excessive artwork and shopper business.
In a single advert, an AIDS affected person lay on his again, his mouth open, his fingers curled on his chest. His darkish eyes stared previous his household, who had gathered round his deathbed. The affected person, David Kirby, appeared nearly Christ-like.
And there, close to the underside proper, a number of phrases hung in a inexperienced field: “United Colours of Benetton.”
The commercial, which ran within the Nineties, was one of the vital provocative and divisive in current style historical past, prompting livid debates over whether or not Benetton, and Mr. Toscani, have been creating artwork, partaking in advocacy or exploiting the epidemic to promote its garments.
Notably, Mr. Toscani had the Kirby household’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 wished.”
Mr. Toscani’s adverts have been usually socially progressive, with photos of racially numerous and homosexual households. They have been additionally meant to shock. He used footage 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“Promoting companies make tens of millions by repeating the identical outdated factor,” he advised The New York Instances in 1995, including, “We attempt to go one other means.”
Mr. Toscani typically 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 pictures of demise row inmates throughout america.
He returned as inventive 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, by which he delighted in his broadside challenges to traditional concepts of respectability. Somewhat, it was due to an offhand remark he made in a radio interview a couple of bridge collapse in Italy by which greater than 40 folks died. “Who cares {that a} bridge collapsed?” he had stated. Although he apologized, Benetton fired him.
Italian politicians and inventive leaders honored him in social media tributes on Monday. The designer Valentino Garavani, the creator of Valentino, known as him “a visionary who challenged the world by way of his lens.” The designer Giorgio Armani wrote that “the directness and visible influence of his language set an ordinary.”
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 info on survivors was not instantly accessible.
In his last months, Mr. Toscani advised the Corriere della Sera that he had misplaced weight whereas being handled for amyloidosis and that his sense of style had declined. Wine tasted totally different to him, he stated. “I’m not fascinated about dwelling like this,” he added.
However in September, he traveled to the Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich for a significant retrospective of his work known as “Oliviero Toscani: Images and Provocation.” It closed simply over per week earlier than he died.
“I’ve discovered that promoting is the richest and strongest medium current right now,” he advised The Instances 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.
