Abelardo Morell (American, b.1948) is one of the few remaining contemporary artists specializing in the application of Camera Obscura, an ancient photography technique that uses the obscura camera, a square-shaped structure with a small aperture that permits light to penetrate through the lens, in order to project inverted images from outside. The technique was heavily employed by Renaissance artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci to aid in painting, and Morell uses it to capture amazing images of choice locations around the cities of New York and Boston. Abelardo Morell was born and raised in Cuba, but in 1962, at the height of the Cold War, his family fled to New York City, where he studied at Bowdoin College and graduated with a BFA in 1977. In 1981, Morell received an MFA from Yale University School of Art. He dedicated the next 10 to 15 years of his career to Camera Obscura photography, creating numerous impressive pieces that have been showcased extensively across museums and art galleries in the United States.
Morell’s black and white image of a set from the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Manon, Manon Building Façade, is our collection’s second photo release in its 42-year-history; in 1979 an image by Richard Avedon was the first photograph to be selected by the List Collection.
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
Lacock Abbey, Fox Talbot Museum, Wiltshire, England
Twilight, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY
Celebrating Central Park 1953-2003, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, NY
Contemporary Photographs and Prints from the Bruce Brown Collection, Colby
College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME
