Oliviero Toscani, the person behind the shock promoting campaigns that helped make Italy’s Benetton one of many world’s greatest clothes manufacturers, died on Monday on the age of 82, his household stated in an announcement.
Toscani was admitted to hospital on Friday in Cecina, close to his Tuscan nation house, in a really critical situation. A supply with information of the matter stated on Saturday he had misplaced consciousness.
“It’s with nice sorrow that we announce the information that at present, 13 January 2025, our beloved Oliviero has launched into his subsequent journey,” Toscani’s spouse Kirsti and three youngsters stated within the assertion.
The photographer had revealed in an interview in August with the Corriere della Sera newspaper that he was affected by amyloidosis, a uncommon and incurable situation that results in the construct up of amyloid proteins that have an effect on the physique’s important organs.
Toscani stated he had misplaced 40 kg (88 lb) in weight in a single 12 months and the newspaper printed an image of him trying sickly and emaciated.
Toscani, who was born on Feb. 28, 1942, adopted in his father’s footsteps by coaching as a photographer, learning in Zurich and dealing for a variety of vogue magazines the place he helped set up the careers of fashions together with Monica Bellucci.
Nonetheless he got here to prominence within the Eighties as artistic director for Benetton, the family-owned vogue chain primarily based in northern Italy.
Toscani put photos of a dying AIDS affected person and the blood-drenched garments of a soldier killed in Bosnia on to billboards around the globe, stoking controversies that helped to popularise the “United Colours of Benetton” emblem.
The photographer left Benetton in 2000 after a furore over a marketing campaign that includes photos of US prisoners on loss of life row.
Toscani and American freelance journalist Ken Shulman interviewed and photographed 26 prisoners awaiting execution in US jails in a marketing campaign which learn like a passionate manifesto towards capital punishment.
“I exploit clothes to boost social points,” Toscani informed Reuters in an interview on the time because the controversy raged over whether or not the marketing campaign was a step too far.
“Conventional promoting says for those who purchase a sure product you may be lovely, sexually highly effective, profitable. All that bullshit doesn’t actually exist,” he stated.
He resumed working for the group in 2017, reestablishing his partnership with Luciano Benetton, one of many firm founders, who had returned to attempt to revive a model that had been overtaken by nimbler gamers within the quick vogue sector.
Nonetheless, the Benetton group reduce ties with him in 2020 after feedback that performed down the importance of the 2018 Morandi Bridge catastrophe which killed 43 folks.
The bridge in Genoa was operated on the time by a unit of the Benetton family-controlled infrastructure group Atlantia.
His work was showcased in an exhibition in Zurich’s Museum fur Gestaltung in 2024 entitled “Pictures and Provocation.”
By Silvia Ognibene and Alvise Armellini; Editors: Andrew Heavens and Kate Mayberry
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Oliviero Toscani is returning to the Italian model, as soon as identified for its controversial politically progressive ads, amidst a wider cultural local weather of elevated polarization and activism.
