Duane Michals
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On February 18, 1932, Duane Michals was born in McKeesport. Pennsylvania; a steel mill suburb of Pittsburgh.
His father, John, was a mill-wright in Mr. Carnegie's Duquesne works. His mother Margaret was a clerk at Kaufmann's Department Store.
Duane was the news editor of his high school paper, The Red and Blue which won an award for being the best edited high school paper in Pennsylvania.
He attended the University of Denver on a scholarship and was very homesick, but he grew out of it.
During the Korean War, Michals spent two years as a lieutnant in the Second Army Division. It was the worst time of his life.
He returned home from the war to attend the Parson's School of Design, but dropped out, as it was a waste of time.
While working at Time Inc, as a graphic designer, Michals took a trip to Russia in 1958 with a borrowed camera and that's how he became a photographer.
Being a natural story teller, he invented sequential photography in 1966 and had a one-man exhibition at MoMA NY in 1970.
Although he was without a studio and knew little about photography, he became a successful commercial photographer.
Duane has had over 200 one-man exhibitions and been in 300 group exhibitions. There are thirty-two books about or by him.
He admires William Blake, Darwin, De Chirico, Magritte, Borges & Lewis Carol. Frederick Gorree has been his great friend for forty-five years.
The photographer was awarded the title of Officier dans L'Order des Arts et des Lettres, Paris 1993.
He is a spiritual atheist.
Selected Exhibitions
2018 "Duane Michals Retrospective", Museo Ettore Fico, Turin, Italy.
2017 "Duane Michals Retrospective", Fundación Mapfre, Barcelona, Spain.
2016 "Photographs from the Floating World", Bennington Museum, Bennington, VT.
2016 Ralph Eugene & Duane Michals: "Camera Drama", University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, PA.
2015 "Collector", The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA.
2015 "Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals", Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, USA.
2015 "The Portraitist", DC Moore Gallery, New York.
2014 Duane Michals, NRW-Forum, Düsseldorf.
2014 "Empty New York", DC Moore Gallery, New York.
2013 "The Painted Photograph", DC Moore Gallery, New York.
2008 Ian Ritterskamp/Duane Michals, Galerie Clara Maria Sels GmbH, Dusseldorf, Germany
2008 Beautiful People, Centre d'Art la Panera, Lerida, Spain
2007 Warhol sobre Warhol, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain
2006 Contos Dixitais, CGAC - Centro Galego de Art Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
2005 International Center of Photography, New York, NY
2004 “The Ecstasy of Things” at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland
1999 Odakyu Museum, Tokyo, Japan 1999 “Cosmos” at the Musée de Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Canada
1999 “The Century of the Body: Photoworks 1900-2000” at the Musee de l’Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland
1999 “From Camouflage to Free Style” at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
1971 George Eastman House, Rochester, NY
1970 First solo exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY