"Photography is the very conscience of painting. It constantly reminds the latter of what it must not do."
Born in 1899 in Transylvania, Gyula Halász, known as Brassaï, is one of the few artists who influenced not only the history of photography but also twentieth-century modernism. Brassaï develops his approach to photography with a firm grip on reality, as objectively as possible, but never giving up an aesthetic view of the world. If his photographs of Paris by Night and of Secret Paris, taken during the 1930s, are anchored in the public's urban imagination, his collaborations with all the leading artists of the 20th century such as Picasso, Dalí, Henri Michaux, Le Corbusier to name a few, further establish his facility for capturing what is immutable in the activities of man. This "living eye," to use Henry Miller's expression, will always be a treasure who, together with his works, has the unique power to delight anew.