COMO.- Following the initiative by Italian luxury brand Larusmiani, the Newton Foundation presents the exhibition "Helmut Newton. Cars". This time, the venue is the garden of Villa Olmo on Lake Como, which has been transformed into a vast open-air museum as part of the FuoriConcorso 2026, KraftMeister - where automotive culture becomes art. Across 20 large-format panels, the automobile is celebrated through a selection of Newton’s car photographs, taken between 1956 and 2001. At the same time, this is the first exhibition dedicated to this important theme in Newton’s body of work, which will be explored further in a larger presentation at the Berlin-based Newton Foundation in the near future. In Como itself, Newton worked repeatedly from the 1970s onward, most notably by the lake or at Villa d’Este and its famous garden. The exhibition is curated by Matthias Harder, Director of the Newton Foundation.
"There are collectors who accumulate, and patrons who preserve. I have always believed in the second path: that of those who do not merely possess beauty, but assume the responsibility of transmitting it, of keeping it alive for those who will come after us. Helmut Newton was an interpreter of elegant matter. He knew how to see in the automobile what I seek to see in fabric, in cut, in the silhouette of a garment, that unresolved tension between function and desire, between technical precision and pure seduction. His photographs do not document cars: they inhabit them. And in that inhabiting, they reveal something true about the era, about the human condition, about taste as a form of thought. To bring this exhibition to Villa Olmo, on the lake that Newton himself loved and frequented, has been for Larusmiani a natural act, almost inevitable. We are founding partners of FuoriConcorso because we believe the automobile deserves the same curatorial dignity accorded to architecture, to fashion, to art- for this has been, for one hundred years, our most authentic vocation." - Guglielmo Miani, CEO, Larusmiani
Helmut Newton also had a lifelong passion for cars; it is therefore no surprise that this subject matter occupied an important place in his fashion photography over the decades, and that he later went on to produce and shoot advertising campaigns for numerous renowned automobile brands. It all began in the mid-1950s, when Newton, during a holiday trip to Rome, used his white Porsche 356 as a backdrop for a private portrait of his wife June on the Via Appia Antica – or shortly thereafter, back in Melbourne, in a fashion shoot for Australian Vogue. In the early 1960s, he photographed men’s fashion for Adam magazine at the Jaguar factory in Coventry, and women’s fashion in color, en plein air, for French Vogue, this time featuring a red Fiat 1200. In 1963, he portrayed Françoise Sagan in a Jaguar E-Type, also for French Vogue, while the British model Jean Shrimpton, in a Newton fashion shoot for British Vogue in 1966, was transformed into the hood ornament of a Rolls-Royce – miniaturized and collaged into the photographic composition.
During those years, Newton experimented extensively: for Adam, he photographed from the back seat of a Facel Vega sports car, shooting outward across the dashboard, while the fashion on the hood became a secondary motif. In Rome, he had a model emerge through the sunroof of a Fiat 500 for Italian Vogue, and for French Vogue he created a large-scale photographic sequence telling the story of a mysterious young woman whose Mercedes-Benz 190c is inspected by customs officers at the French–Belgian border.
He continued to realize such unusual narratives and densely composed single images throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, as demonstrated by this small but representative selection of 38 photographs spanning six decades. The automobile appears countless times in his work, in a wide variety of situations – sometimes in the background as a kind of luxurious accessory, but also as an equal subject in its own right. In his advertising campaigns, for example for the New Beetle, created in Milan in 1999, or for Italdesign in the same year, he shifted the focus even more toward the automobile and its design, without, however, dispensing with human models.
One highlight of the current show is the first-ever presentation of a fashion photograph taken in Como, created in 1996 for Italian Vogue: a blonde woman with heavily teased hair, wearing a tight black cocktail dress, stands beside an Alfa Romeo Spider. In the open trunk, we see an opened briefcase filled with bundles of 100,000-lira banknotes. The sports car bears a license plate from the city of Como. The story behind this cache of banknotes is, of course, a matter of speculation – a strikingly characteristic and ambivalent element in Newton’s fashion imagery.
In 2022, Larusmiani celebrated 100 years of experience, looking at the success of three generations that have been the guiding pillars of the company. Today, the brand represents the real Made in Italy and safeguards the artisan traditions, always looking ahead in search of new modern trends. Larusmiani is also the founding partner of FuoriConcorso, a role that goes beyond sponsorship. Since its inception, the brand has contributed to defining the event’s aesthetic and positioning, helping shape a format where automotive culture is presented alongside design, fashion, and lifestyle. This approach reflects Larusmiani’s own vision, where craftsmanship and contemporary culture coexist. More at: larusmiani.com
This year, FuoriConcorso presents KraftMeister, a tribute to the soul of German craftsmanship. FuoriConcorso KraftMeister is the pinnacle of German engineering transformed into an immersive experience, where era-defining production cars, motorsport icons forged on the world’s circuits, and avant-garde concept cars are showcased alongside a carefully curated selection from renowned German tuners. A visionary journey into the essence of German mastery, where steel and asphalt have written tales of dominance, speed, and precision. Design is pure function: sharp edges, forms born to win.
