The last exhibition in France dedicated to Man Ray dates from 1998. This shows the importance of the retrospective organized in Albi, until January 2019. At the initiative of the network of media libraries, the exhibition "Vues de l' spirit" was created thanks to the partnership of three major Albigensian cultural centers. The national scene, the Toulouse-Lautrec museum and the Pierre-Almaric media library therefore welcome for three months 220 works by the American painter and photographer.
Man Ray - real name Emmanuel Radnitsky - was born in Philadelphia, United States, in 1890.
After studying under the principles of the Catalan libertarian educator Francisco Ferrer, his career began in New York, where, with his friend Marcel Duchamp, he founded the Dada movement. He arrived in France at the beginning of the 1920s where he joined the surrealist movement.
He quickly frequented Louis Aragon, André Breton, Paul Éluard and Gala and settled in the Montparnasse district in Paris, with the singer Kiki de Montparnasse who became his muse. Man Ray revolutionized photography and his photos are famous throughout the world, like his Violin d'Ingres, a nude of Kiki whose back is decorated with gills.