Oliviero Toscani, an Italian photographer who, as the creative brain behind Benetton's advertising campaigns, used images of an AIDS patient and death row prisoners to break the boundaries of fashion images, died on Monday. He was 82.
His death was announced by his family on Instagram. They did not say where he died or give a cause of death, but in August Mr Toscani told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that he had been diagnosed with amyloidosis, a rare and incurable condition involving a build-up of proteins.
His shock-and-awe campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s saw Benetton grow from a small Italian brand into a global fashion giant, with provocative ads that blurred the lines between marketing and activism, high art and consumer industry.
In one ad, an AIDS patient lay on his back, his mouth open, his hands curled on his chest. His dark eyes stared past his family gathered around his deathbed. The patient, David Kirby, looked almost Christ-like.
And there, at the bottom right, hung a few words in a green frame: 'United Colors of Benetton.'
The ad, which appeared in the 1990s, was one of the most provocative and divisive in recent fashion history, sparking fierce debate over whether Benetton and Mr. Toscani were creating art, engaging in advocacy or exploiting the epidemic to to sell clothes.
Notably, Mr. Toscani had permission from the Kirby family to use a colorized version of the image, which was taken in 1990 by photographer Therese Frare. The Kirbys said the campaign had helped raise awareness of AIDS.
“Benetton did not use or exploit us,” the Kirby family said, claiming this was a way to get their son's portrait “seen around the world, which is exactly what David wanted.”
Mr. Toscani's ads were often socially progressive, featuring images of racially diverse and gay families. They were also intended to shock. He used photos of horses mating. He used the bloodstained uniform of a soldier who had been killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. One ad showed actors dressed as a priest and a nun kissing.
“Ad agencies make millions by repeating the same old thing,” he told The New York Times in 1995, adding, “We're trying to go in a different direction.”
Mr Toscani sometimes even crossed the line for Benetton. He joined the company in 1982 and left in 2000 amid an uproar over an ad campaign featuring photos of death row inmates in the United States.
In 2017 he returned as creative director. But his career at Benetton came to an end in 2020, not because of the calculated and daring risks he had taken in photography and advertising, where he relished his broad challenges to conventional ideas of respectability. Rather, it was due to a casual comment he made in a radio interview about the collapse of a bridge in Italy, which killed more than forty people. “Who cares if a bridge collapses?” he had said. Although he apologized, Benetton fired him.
Italian politicians and creative leaders honored him with tributes on social media on Monday. Designer Valentino Garavani, creator of Valentino, called him “a visionary who challenged the world through his lens.” The designer Giorgio Armani wrote that “the immediacy and visual impact of his language set a standard.”
Oliviero Toscani was born in Milan on February 28, 1942. He followed in the footsteps of his father, Fedele Toscani, a photojournalist. Mr Toscani trained at the Zurich School of Applied Arts and worked as a fashion designer before joining the Benetton Group as art director in 1982.
His survivors include his wife, Kirsti Moseng Toscani, and their three children, Rocco, Lola and Ali. Mr. Toscani had been married twice before and had three more children. Complete information about survivors was not immediately available.
In his final months, Mr Toscani told Corriere della Sera that he had lost weight during treatment for amyloidosis and that his sense of taste had diminished. Wine tasted different to him, he said. “I'm not interested in living like this,” he added.
But in September he traveled to the Museum für Gestaltung Zurich for a major retrospective of his work called 'Oliviero Toscani: Photography and Provocation'. It closed just over a week before he died.
“I have discovered that advertising is the richest and most powerful medium that exists today,” he told The Times in 1991. “So I feel responsible to do more than just say, 'Our jersey is nice.'”
Elisabetta Povoledo And Matthew Mpoke Bigg reporting contributed.
