An exclusive guided tour by Mária Tatai of René Burri’s exhibition *Utopia*

During her guided tour, architect, choreographer, and art writer Mária Tatai presents René Burri’s body of work and the world of the Utopia exhibition from a personal perspective, highlighting fascinating connections.

René Burri, best known for his portraits of Che Guevara smoking a cigar, reported on the most significant events of the second half of the 20th century as a true photojournalist during the era of mass-circulation photo magazines. He joined the Magnum Photo Agency in 1955 and became a full member in 1959. Over the course of his six-decade career, he traveled throughout Europe, the Middle East, North, Central, and South America, Japan, and China. He was in Berlin when the Wall fell, photographed the student protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and documented the devastation of war in Beirut. The exhibition titled Utopia, however, offers a fresh perspective on Burri’s multifaceted body of work, this time reflecting the century’s significant transformations through the formal language of modern architecture. In this sense, this selection can also be seen as a tribute to architecture: Burri captured buildings that have become icons of modernism in his uniquely artistic photographs, from Le Corbusier’s Chapel at Ronchamp to Oscar Niemeyer’s ministry buildings designed for Rio de Janeiro and Brasília. Paris Match, among other publications, gave prominent coverage to his photo series, which also featured portraits of artists; the exhibition focuses on the world-renowned creators of modern architecture among these.