In 2023 celebrities flew away in droves, and these portraits are not even enough to tell the story of them all. Sports lost stars like the legendary Dick Fosbury. So much beauty has gone with Gina Lollobrigida, Tatjana Patitz, Jane Birkin, Helmut Berger. But the intellectual quota lost is also very high, including philosophers, women writers, poets and architects, fashion designers, journalists and cartoonists.
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Constantine II of Greece, January 10, 2023
In January the last king of Greece Constantine II, about whom the gossip press has spoken much in the past partly because of the special relationship-“friendship or sentiment?” royal commentators wondered-which existed between him and Princess Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth, passed away at the age of 82.
Tatjana Patitz, January 11, 2023
Supermodel in the era when models counted a lot without the need for social media, muse of great photographers, star of several covers, Tatjana Patitz died at the age of 56 from breast cancer, leaving behind a son, a sister her parents and an army of admirers who loved her for nearly three decades.
Lisa Marie Presley, January 12, 2023
On January 12, Lisa Marie Presley, the only daughter of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu, and the sole heir to the Graceland estate, passed away from cardiac arrest. In 1994, twenty days after divorcing her first husband Danny Keough, she had married Michael Jackson, whom she had known for twenty years, and they had then divorced two years later.
Julian Sands, January 13, 2023
Just turned 65, a beloved star in the previous century thanks to the 1985 cult film Room with a View, Julian Sands did not return from a hike in California’s Mount San Antonio on Jan. 13. His body was found five months later, on June 24, a time too long even to determine the cause of death.
Gina Lollobrigida, January 16, 2023
A great actress, a brilliant mind, a talented photographer, and only accidentally also one of the most beautiful women in Italian cinema and perhaps the world. On Jan. 16, Gina Lollobrigida passed away at the age of 95, leaving behind long aftermaths of legacy battles that are no longer her problem.
Paco Rabanne, February 3, 2023
He sewed plastics, mixed fabrics with metal, had cleared customs for brass see-through on Jane Fonda’s body with costumes for the film Barbarella. The brilliant Spanish designer Paco Rabanne left us at 88 while in Portsall, France, after bending reality to his liking for sixty years.
Dick Fosbury, March 12, 2023
To the purists of the time, he was just a blowhard who thought he was changing the rules of high jumping. To posterity, Dick Fosbury is a genius who completely revolutionized the rules, because he invented the effective “back” jump, first dared in public at the 1968 Olympics, winning him a gold medal. The inventor of the Forsbury Jump, which is now taught in all schools, passed away at age 76 from a severe form of lymphoma.
Ryūichi Sakamoto, March 28, 2023
The prophet of Japanese electronic music, the divine composer of legendary film scores such as Furyo, where he starred with David Bowie and for which he composed Forbidden Colours together with David Sylvian. Or such as The Last Emperor, where Ryūichi Sakamoto starred again, and Tea in the Desert, both by Bertolucci, has passed away at the age of 71 from a recurrence of cancer.
Mary Quant, April 13, 2023
In 2023, at the age of 93, Mary Quant, the most symbolic and revolutionary fashion designer of Swinging London and world history, to whom she gave something pricelessly iconic, for which generations of women continue to be grateful: the miniskirt, also passed away peacefully.
Harry Belafonte, April 25, 2023
In the 1950s of racial segregation, the rise in show business of Harry Belafonte, the Harlem boy of Jamaican descent destined to be crowned “King of Calypso,” was a milestone in human history. His version of the popular song Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) will forever be the most famous. But America is especially grateful to him for his great commitment to civil rights.
Tina Turner, May 24, 2023
2023 also took away Tina Turner, the queen of rock, the most scratchy voice, the longest legs in showbiz. But also a life full of tears, first for her for the mistreatment suffered by her ex-husband Ike Turner and then, in 2018, for the suicide of her son Craig Raymond. She leaves us an immense wealth of songs, from The Best to What’s Love Got to Do with It, which is also the title of the film that tells her life.
Silvio Berlusconi, 12 June 2023
2023 will also be remembered as the year Silvio Berlusconi died. The 86-year-old former prime minister and patron of Italian commercial TV did not survive the health problems that forced him to undergo yet another emergency hospitalization at San Raffaele in Milan.
Jane Birkin, July 16, 2023
A hypnotic and iconic face and bangs, a symbol of Swinging London, Jane Birkin had achieved fame with Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-Up (1966). In 1968 she became romantically involved with Serge Gainsbourg with whom she also undertook a long professional partnership, the pinnacle of which was represented by the scandalous song Je t’aime … moi non plus. She was found dead in her home in Paris at the age of 76.
Sinéad O’Connor, July 26, 2023
Sinéad O’Connor died at the age of 56, and there really was no one like her, to paraphrase her most famous song Nothing compares 2 U. The hair shaved very short, the large eyes that were portals to abysses revealed only late age with bipolar disorder, borderline personality, post-traumatic stress syndrome, he leaves us with the indelible sound of his wonderful voice.
Mohamed Al-Fayed, 30 August 2023
26 years after the death of his son Dodi, the Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Al-Fayed, 93 years old, former owner of the Harrods department store, has also passed away, in an eternal struggle for social recognition and for the British citizenship which was denied to him in indignity.
Fernando Botero, 15 September 2023
Fernando Botero also left us, the Colombian painter and sculptor who lived in Paris and who had become well known and the living antonomasia of a distinctive style whose figures, soft and inflated forms with unexpected changes in scale are a true social commentary with a humorous tone .
Giorgio Napolitano, 22 September 2023
Giorgio Napolitano, the eleventh president of the Italian Republic, the only one to have been elected for two terms before Sergio Mattarella, passed away at the age of 98 in a clinic in Rome where he had been hospitalized for a few days.
Michael Gambon, September 28, 2023
A great Anglo-Irish actor with a golden CV. But for the last of the devoted fans Michael Gambon, who died at the age of 82 of pneumonia while his wife Anne and son Fergus were at his bedside, will always be Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter saga.
Louise Glück, 13 October 2023
Poet Louise Glück, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature, has died of cancer at the age of 80 in Massachusetts. In 2105 President Barack Obama had awarded her with the National Humanities medal. What remains of her is the strong immediacy and the dark sense of her observation.
Matthew Perry, October 28, 2023
Perhaps it was the most shocking loss of the year because he was feared but unexpected. Matthew Perry was only 54 years old and could count on the love of at least two generations of Friends fans who he had helped keep glued to the TV in the irresistible role of Chandler Bing, the man with the mysterious job, Joey’s roommate with the salacious joke who we all would have liked (and hated for his concise punctuality) as a friend.
Davide Renne, 10 November 2023
In November, the Moschino fashion house directly communicated the premature death of Davide Renne, who had assumed the role of creative director just nine days earlier. Renne was only 46 years old and his death was unexpected for everyone.
Elliott Erwitt, November 29, 2023
He was the photographer of American life, political history, stardom and humor. Backbone of the Magnum agency, Elliott Erwitt was always found wherever there were big facts or small things that caught his attention and his sense of irony and the unusual. He passed away at the age of 95 while he was in his Manhattan home.
Henry Kissinger, November 29, 2023
The former American politician died at his home in Connecticut at the age of 100. Member of the Republican Party, he marked the history of American politics, and beyond. He was National Security Advisor and Secretary of State during the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1977. In 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Wolfgang Schäuble, December 26, 2023
Germany says goodbye to Wolfgang Schäuble, one of the giants of German politics, the hawk of austerity in the eurozone, Angela Merkel’s former finance minister often celebrated at home and equally criticized abroad. The CDU politician passed away “peacefully” at the age of 81 on the evening of December 26, as his family announced.
Lee Sun-kyun, December 27, 2023
The actor Lee Sun-kyun who played Park Dong-ik, the rich father of the family cheated by the “parasites” Kim, in the South Korean film Parasite, winner of 4 Oscars and the Palme d’Or at Cannes, was found dead in the his car at the age of 48 for reasons that have not yet been ascertained.
Read also: Notable deaths of 2022, public figures and celebrities who left us
