Exhibition dates: 25th July – 15th November, 2026

Co-curators: Lesley Harding, Heide Artistic Director; Philippe Ribeyrolles, manager and curator of the Estate Brassaï; and Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais, nephew of the artist, and renowned French photography curator

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Vue à travers le pont Royal en direction du pont Solférino (View through the pont Royal toward the pont Solférino)
c. 1933
Gelatin silver print
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles

 

 

Atmosphere

This is a superb exhibition of the photographs of Hungarian-French photographer, sculptor, medallist, writer, and filmmaker Brassaï (1899-1984) at Heide Museum of Modern Art.

What a pleasure it is to wander the beautiful installation, the hanging, fragmented banner images forming a shimmering whole, much like the atmosphere of Brassaï’s mainly vintage photographs presented in the exhibition.

There is a certain feeling to Brassaï’s vintage prints and I have been thinking about this a lot since seeing the exhibition. And the word I came up with is, sfumato.

“Sfumato (derived from the Italian word sfumare, meaning “to tone down” or “to evaporate like smoke”) is an Italian Renaissance painting technique that softens the transitions between colours and tones, creating a hazy, smoky effect without harsh lines, borders, or abrupt outlines.” (Wikipedia)

Let us be clear, this is not Pictorialism with all its softness and painterly effect, but in Brassaï’s vintage prints a feeling, a feeling, of soft tonality in sharpness – no heavy blacks or strident whites – just a wonderful “atmosphere” of night, presence, people, smoky bars, balls, of degustation – a sequence of many small portions of the urban landscape.

Bill Brandt, who was so inspired by Brassaï’s book Paris de Nuit (1933) that he produced his book A Night in London in 1938, wanted atmosphere to not merely aim to represent a place but to capture its very essence in a single image, to provoke in the viewer an emotional response from the contemplation of the work: “Thus it was I found atmosphere to be the spell that charged the commonplace with beauty. … I only know it is a combination of elements … which reveals the subject as familiar and yet strange.”1

This same smokiness, atmosphere, can be observed in the vintage prints of Brassaï in the exhibition, but not in the similarly sized later reprints. They somehow don’t “hold” to the same feeling even though they are well printed. The tonality and sfumato are somehow lost. The photographic paper of the time, the developer, Brassaï’s way of visualising the print, and knowing exactly what he wanted to say in the final print. All of these things combine to make the whole.

My only quibble, and it’s a very small one, is the title of the exhibition: Secret Paris. A secret means, among other things, a fact or piece of knowledge intentionally concealed from others or known only to a specific person or small group.

None of this society was “intentionally” concealed from others, and it certainly wasn’t a secret from those who took part in the culture of Montparnasse. To presume it was a secret is to buy into a conservative, patriarchal world view in which the government, men and religion hold power over women and heterogeneous people of difference at a time of greater sexual freedom and liberation. The title reinforces this objectification, even today.

While Brassaï was documenting the city that existed beyond the view of conventional society – the intimate gatherings and private moments, the bohemian energy and the inky night time vistas – with “the creative eye of a storyteller” to compile a portrait of a city, these heterotopia2 – spaces that contest, or invert normal society – were well known to those with knowledge of these supposedly hidden dimensions, these counter-sites.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Anonymous text from Fundación MAPFRE. “Landscapes described,” from the exhibition posting Bill Brandt at the Fundación Mapfre, Madrid, June – August 2021 on Art Blart: art and cultural memory archive, August 22, 2021 [Online] Cited 06/11/2026.

2/ “Michel Foucault introduced the concept of heterotopia (Greek: héteros for “other”, tópos for “place”) to describe real, physical spaces that function as “worlds within worlds” or counter-sites. Unlike utopias, which are completely unreal or imagined spaces, heterotopias exist in reality and mirror, contest, or invert normal society.”

Anonymous. “Heterotopia (space),” on the Wikipedia website Nd [Online] Cited 06/11/2026

All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

 

Walk through of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 25th July – 15th November, 2026
Video: Marcus Bunyan

 

Main gallery

 

Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing the main gallery space looking left
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing the main gallery space looking left from the right hand side
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing the main gallery space right hand side
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Wall text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 from the main gallery
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing the photograph Pavés (Pavements) 1931-32 first and unique gelatin silver photograph
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Brassaï made masterful use of the rain-soaked cobblestones of Paris’s dark streets, channeling the delicate reflections cast by the gas lamps to give them a visual presence of their own. In doing so, he elevated them to the status of works of art, and as symbolic of the City of Light. This photograph would go on to grace the cover of his now legendary book Paris de Nuit (1933).

Label text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing the photograph L’Allumeur de bec de gaz, place de la Concorde (Gas lamplighter, place de la Concorde) c. 1933 vintage gelatin silver photograph
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

As a nexus for intellectuals and as one of the earliest European cities to adopt street lighting, Paris became known as the City of Light (Ville Lumière) – its brightly burning lamp posts symbolic of complex interwoven histories.

During the mid-seventeenth century, Louis XIV, ‘The Sun King’, increased street lighting across Paris. The unrest and revolutions of following decades and centuries saw the outdoor lamps and lanterns targeted in acts of rebellion and vandalism. Far from providing a passive ambient glow, the lanterns and lamp posts of Paris carry the weight of objects imbued with the city’s memory.

For Brassaï, the shifting qualities of artificial light presented philosophical and technical points of interest. Documenting the gas lamplighter at work, he illuminates a fleeting moment within the everyday landscape of the city that was soon to be lost by the switch to electric street lighting.

Label text from the exhibition

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing the photograph Fontaine de la Concorde c. 1930 vintage gelatin silver photograph
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing at left the photograph Le Pont Neuf c. 1934 vintage gelatin silver print
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing the photograph Le Pont Neuf c. 1934 vintage gelatin silver print
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing the photograph Disque pour la circulation dans le brouillard, place Denfert-Rochereau (Fog traffic signal, place Denfert-Rochereau) c. 1934 vintage gelatin silver print
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Wall text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 from the main gallery
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing the photograph Léon-Paul Prague avenue de l’Observatoire dans le brouillard (Léon-Paul Frague on avenue de l’Observatoire in the fog) c. 1932 vintage gelatin silver print
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing from left to right, Couple d’amoureux dans un petit café, quartier Italie (Loving Couple in a Small Café, Place d’Italie) c. 1932 vintage gelatin silver print; Couple au bal musette des Quatre Saisons (Couple at the Musette Dance Hall of the Four Seasons) 1932; Couple croisé au bal musette des Quatre-Saisons, rue de Lappe (Cross couple at the Musette Dance Hall of the Four Seasons, rue de Lappe) c. 1932 vintage gelatin silver print; La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre (La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre) 1932
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Couple au bal musette des Quatre Saisons (Couple at the Musette Dance Hall of the Four Seasons)
c. 1932
Vintage gelatin silver print
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles

 

 

Wall text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 from the main gallery
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing the photograph La Bal de la Horde au Bullier, Montparnasse (Bal de la Horde at Bullier, Montparnasse) c. 1932 vintage gelatin silver print
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing at second left, Toilette dans une maison de passe, rue Quinncampoix (Washing up in a brothel, rue Quincampoix) c. 1932 gelatin silver print; and at right, La Toilette (The wash) c. 1932 vintage gelatin silver print
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Toilette dans une maison de passe, rue Quinncampoix (Washing up in a brothel, rue Quincampoix)
c. 1932
Gelatin silver print
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
La Toilette (The wash)
c. 1932
Vintage gelatin silver print
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles

 

 

This exhibition will present the most comprehensive survey of the work of the eminent Hungarian-born, French photographer Brassaï yet to be seen in Australia. With a focus on the artist’s iconic images of the city and its people by night, the exhibition will also consider his friendship with Picasso and other leading figures of the Parisian avant-garde, his experiments with Surrealism, and his hallmark photographs of graffiti. Produced in collaboration with the artist’s estate, this survey brings together more than 150 vintage prints and offers a fascinating visual journey into the intimate world of Paris in the 1930s.

Text from the Heide Museum of Modern Art website

 

Gallery two

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing photographs from the series Graffiti (titles below) in gallery two
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing photographs 1-6 from the series Graffiti (titles below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing photographs 6-8 from the series Graffiti (titles below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing photographs 9-13 from the series Graffiti (titles below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing photographs 7-13 from the series Graffiti (titles below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Titles for the series Graffiti for the photograph (above) from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Série VII: La Mort – Tête de Morte (Series VII: Death – Skull) (installation view)
1930-1950
Gelatin silver photograph
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Série VIII: La Magie – Petit personnage irradiant (Series VIII: Magic – Small radiating figure) (installation view)
1930-1950
Gelatin silver photograph
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Wall text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 from gallery two
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Paris de nuit/Paris After Dark (installation view)
1933
First edition
Printed 1932, distributed 1933
Edition arts et métiers graphiques, Paris
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

The photobook Paris de nuit (1933) made Brassaï’s name as a photographer and opened the medium to the realm of the nocturne, which had previously been the domain of painting. Although he was not the first to shoot at night, Brassai’s sustained and successful efforts inspired others to take up the challenge, notably Bill Brandt in London and Weegee in New York. Australia’s own Max Dupain also trialled taking images of city streets after dark in the 1940s.

The first edition of Paris du nuit from Brassaï’s personal collection is inscribed with the date 1932, indicating that it was one of a few advance copies sent to the artist prior to the book’s publication and distribution in 1933.

Paris de nuit was published in English soon after as Paris After Dark with a translation of Paul Morand’s accompanying essay. The spiral binding of the book allows the borderless images to lie flat in pairs and merge as one story, adding to the moody, dark beauty of the imagery.

Label text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026

 

 

Minotaure no.3-4 (installation view)
1933
Magazine
Cover by André Derain
Editions d’art Albert Skira, Paris
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Brassaï’s substantial body of work depicting graffiti was admired and collected by artists, intellectuals and friends including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and Jacques Prévert. Notably, his graffiti images inspired the artist Jean Dubuffet, whose development of art brut (translating to ‘raw art’) similarly acknowledged the power of raw human expression.

On occasion, Brassaï would search fro graffiti symbols requested by his friends. In an interview, Brassaï’s wife Gilberte recalled a particular appeal from Georges Braque who asked the photographer to look for graffiti of a fish, a symbol often used by Braque in his work.

Minotaure no.3-4 (1933) features Brassaï’s essay ‘Du mur des cavernes au mur d’usine’ (From the cave walls to the factory walls) describing graffiti symbols as a form of timeless writing and expression, stating ‘It is no longer a matter of playing, but of mastering the frenzy of the unconscious’.

Label text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing photographs 1-4 from the series Graffiti (titles below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing photographs 4-10 from the series Graffiti (titles below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing photographs 9-13 from the series Graffiti (titles below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

No. 12: While best known as a photographer and writer, Brassaï’s talents extended to a wide variety of disciplines including sculpture and drawing. In his images of graffiti, his appreciation of graphic and volumetric elements, informed by his practice as a sculptor and draughtsman, is clearly articulated.

Within the etched graffiti works, the linear qualities of the imagery are made manifest through contrasting shadows born of a shift in surface depth. Created through an alternate graffiti drawing methodology, Mademoiselle Picaseau, rather than being carved deeply into the wall’s surface, presents as a ghostly chalked apparition of expressive and stylised line work.

Label text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 from gallery two

 

 

Titles for the series Graffiti for the photographs (above) from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Série V: Animaux – Poussin (Series VIII: Animals – Chick) (installation view)
1955
Gelatin silver photograph
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Série V: Animaux – Enchassier, Faubourg Saint-Antoine (Series VIII: Animals – Wading Bird, Faubourg Saint-Antoine) (installation view)
1930-1950
Gelatin silver photograph
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Série V: Animaux – Chien (Series VIII: Animals – Dog) (installation view)
1930-1950
Gelatin silver photograph mounted on card
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Série IV: Masques et visages – Le Roi-Soleil (Series IV: Masks and faces – The Sun King)
1952
Gelatin silver photograph
29.8 x 22.5cm
Heide Museum of Modern Art

 

The well-known Melbourne restaurateur and gallerist George Mora met Brassaï during one of his annual trips to Paris in the 1970s and asked him to present a selling show of his photographs at Mora’s Tolarno Galleries. Two exhibitions of Brassaï’s work were held at Tolarno, in 1979 and 1980.

This photograph was acquired from one of these exhibitions by Heide founders John and Sunday Reed. With a long history as art patrons and collectors, the Reeds recognised the significance of Brassaï’s work and its importance to the circle of artists who frequented Heide in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker in particular referenced Brassaï’s imagery in their own work.

On the back of many photographs, annotations are present – including titles, stamps or other pieces of information relating to the photograph’s history. Inscribed in cursive on the verso of this photograph are the words ‘”Le masque” Le Roi-Soleil’, translating to ‘”The Mask” The Sun King’.

Label text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 from gallery two

 

 

Heide Museum of Modern Art has announced Brassaï: Secret Paris, a major survey exhibition of work by the eminent Hungarian-born French photographer Brassaï, presented from 25 July – 15 November 2026.

The exhibition marks the most comprehensive presentation of Brassaï’s work ever seen in Australia, and his first solo exhibition in the country in over five decades. It is the third major modernist photography exhibition presented by Heide in five years, following the acclaimed Man Ray and Max Dupain in 2025 and Surrealist Lee Miller in 2023.

Brassaï: Secret Paris brings together more than 150 original vintage prints depicting the City of Light in the 1930s. Co-curated by Heide Artistic Director Lesley Harding, Philippe Ribeyrolles, manager and curator of the Estate Brassaï and nephew of the artist, and renowned French photography curator Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais, the exhibition encompasses Brassaï’s greatest achievements. These include his iconic atmospheric black-and-white images of Paris and its people by night, his relationships with leading figures of the Parisian avant-garde, his experiments with Surrealism, and hallmark photographs of graffiti captured at the dawn of contemporary street art.

Lesley Harding, Artistic Director Heide Museum of Modern Art, said: “Brassaï is one of the great photographers of the twentieth century, and we are delighted to bring this depth of work to Australian audiences for the first time in a generation. His images continue to resonate nearly a century on, and in presenting the full breadth of his practice, from night photographs and graffiti to surrealist experiments and portraits of his inner circle, this exhibition at Heide reveals an artist of remarkable range and vision.”

Philippe Ribeyrolles of the Estate Brassaï said: “This exhibition was prepared in the heart of Paris, in the very place where Brassaï lived and where his memory still endures. I personally wished to imbue this presentation with the familial spirit and soul that belonged to the Brassaï I knew, and which I strive to preserve in my capacity as the artist’s nephew. For this reason, the exhibition is conceived as an invitation to journey into the heart of an oeuvre focused primarily on the secret Paris of the 1930s, through a selection of photographs whose prints were all made by Brassaï himself. For Henry Miller, Brassaï was the ‘Eye of Paris’. Even today, it is this eye that teaches us not only how to see, but above all how to look.”

Born in 1899 in Transylvania (present-day Romania), Brassaï arrived in Paris in the 1920s, where he would spend the remainder of his working life. Working through the night in Montparnasse and its surroundings, Brassaï documented an unseen Paris, its cafes, bars, street corners, sex workers and the demimonde, with a clarity and psychological depth that set him apart from his contemporaries. In 1933 he published the photo book, Paris de nuit (Paris by Night), which established him as one of the defining photographers of the 20th century.

Central to the exhibition is Brassaï’s close friendship with Pablo Picasso, documented across decades of photographs made in Picasso’s studio, alongside portraits of Salvador Dalí, writer Henry Miller, and cabaret singer Kiki de Montparnasse. Moving within the innermost circles of the Parisian avant-garde, Brassaï captured these figures with the same intimacy he brought to the city’s margins. 

Other significant works in the exhibition trace Brassaï’s sustained interest in early graffiti: crude marks, faces and figures carved into the stone walls of Paris, which he photographed over many years. These photographs, presented in his landmark 1956 exhibition Language of the Wall at MoMA New York, position Brassaï as an observer of vernacular mark-making at a moment before contemporary street art existed as a category.

The exhibition will also include his experimental portfolio, Transmutations (1934-1935), containing photomontage and collage inspired by the Dadaists and Surrealists, exploring alternative realities below the surface of the photographic image.

Adding local context to the exhibition, Brassaï had a relationship with Australian art dealer Georges Mora, and had two exhibitions at his Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne in 1979 and 1980. A work purchased by Heide founders John and Sunday Reed during that period will be included in the exhibition.

Accompanying Brassaï: Secret Paris is a comprehensive catalogue featuring an essay by Gael Newton AM tracing Brassaï’s impact on Australian photography including W.L. Lucke-Meyer’s photo book, Melbourne by Night (1933), a personal contribution on the man and artist by Philippe Ribeyrolles, a curatorial overview by Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais, and new research on Brassaï’s influence on the Heide artists by Lesley Harding.

The exhibition has been designed by Mel Bright, Eliza Ng, Maryna Popova and Pei She Lee of Melbourne architecture firm Studio Bright, who previously designed the celebrated Barbara Hepworth: In Equilibrium exhibition at Heide in 2022.

Press release from Heide Museum of Modern Art

 

Gallery three

 

Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing gallery three
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing gallery three
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Wall text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 from gallery three
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing at centre the photograph Escalier de la Butte Montmartre (Steps of Montmartre) 1937 vintage gelatin silver print (below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Escalier de la Butte Montmartre (Steps of Montmartre)
c. 1937
Vintage gelatin silver print
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing at centre the photograph Enfants, rue Mouffetard (Chilren, rue Mouffetard) 1930s vintage gelatin silver print (below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Enfants, rue Mouffetard (Children, rue Mouffetard) (installation view)
1930s
Vintage gelatin silver print
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
La Pluie, rue de Rivoli (Rain, rue de Rivoli) (installation view)
1937
Vintage gelatin silver print
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gallery four

 

Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing gallery four
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
La Tourterelle et la poupée (Turtledove and doll) (installation view)
1937
Contact gelatin silver photographs mounted on paper on cardboard
Estate Brassaï Succession, Philippe Ribeyrolles
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

After establishing Minotaure in Paris in 1933, Albert Skira founded the arts journal Labyrinthe (1944-1946) in Geneva, with the support of the artists Balthus and Alberto Giacometti, who helped design the journal layout. Labyrinthe acted as a post-war forum across art, poetry, literature and philosophy and ran to 23 issues printed in a newspaper-like form in an attempt to reach a wide readership.

Brassaï wrote a short story for issue 8 in 1945 ‘La Tourterelle et la poupée’, which he illustrated with these photographs.

‘As you move from one image to the next what matters isn’t so much the story’s continuity as its syncopated rhythm’, he wrote. These proof pages display a different title, ‘Les amours de Jupiter’ (The Loves of Jupiter) – a reference to the Roman god’s amorous transformations, such as turning into a bull for Europa or an eagle for Ganymede, and the subject of a series of etchings by Picasso published by Skira in 1930.

Label text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026

 

 

Minotaure no.1 (installation view)
1933
Magazine
Cover by Pablo Picasso
Editions d’art Albert Skira, Paris
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Brassaï contributed both photographs and texts to the legendary art magazine Minotaure, founded by Albert Skira and Tériade (Stratis Eleftheriades) in 1933. Over the following six years, the magazine ran to 13 issues and became the primary publishing vehicle for the Surrealist movement.

After being introduced to Picasso by Tériade in 1932, Brassaï contributed to Minotaure‘s inaugural issues with photos of Picasso’s studio and sculptures. Through the magazine, he would meet and collaborate with many other Surrealist artists and members of the Parisian avant-garde.

In Minotaure no.1 (1933), Brassaï contributed 46 photographs across three stories- 11 images in ‘Picasso dans son élément’ by André Breton; 31 images in ‘L’Atelier de sculpture’, a photo essay of Picasso’s sculptural works; and four images of nudes to ‘Variété du corps human’ by Maurice Raynal.

Label text from the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026

 

Gallery five

 

Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï: Secret Paris at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July – November, 2026 showing gallery five
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Heide Museum of Modern Art
7, Templestowe Road
Bulleen, Victoria 3105

Opening hours:
(Heide II and Heide III)
Tuesday – Sunday 10.00am – 5.00pm

Heide Museum of Modern Art website

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