Feb 23, 2026
3 min read
The 2026 Winter Olympics are drawing to a close and here is a compilation of some of the most impressive photos captured in Milan-Cortina.
11 shocking pictures of the Winter Olympics that look like works of art
- Autor, Kelly Grovier
- Author's name, Culture
- Reading time: 8 min
According to the testimony of Paleolithic cave paintings in the Altai Mountains of northwestern China, ice art may be as old as calligraphy.
The picture, which shows hunters chasing wild animals on primitive skis, won the first prizes for these competitors: gold, not silver or bronze, but the meat of the animals they hunted. It is suggested that it is skin and bones.
When it comes to documenting the achievements of winter sports, things have changed over the millennia since the days of charcoal scrawls on rocks.
Our shutters are faster, but the miracle is not deeper.
Below are some interesting photos taken during the last two weeks of the Olympic Games in Milan and Cortina, commemorating the great works of art that are created by the amazing artists.
1. Luge infrared
An infrared image of Ukraine's Yulianna Tuniska competing in the women's individual diving competition at the Cortina Ice Skating Center on Day 3 captures a metaphorical image that appears to be in sync with the frequency of the ice on which she skates.
Tunitzka's form melts into a radiant line, radiating an ancient chill, while the world around her is an energy field that echoes Italian Futurist artist Benedetta Capa's painting "Synthesis of Radio Communication" (1933-1934).
2. Tiger's Eye
There is a silent terror in the green tiger print on the face of Italian skier Federica Brignone's helmet, as seen in a photo of the athletes training for the women's undergrad event on the first day of the Winter Olympics at the Tofane Alpine Ski Center in Cortina d'Ampezzo.
The impulse to combine the sense of self and the determination of the soul and the primal power of the untamed tiger was tested almost two hundred years ago by the Italian Romantic painter Francesco Hayez, whose rare 1831 painting Autoritratto con tigre e leone ("Self-Portrait with Tiger and Lion") can be seen in the Poldi Museum of Peoli of Poldi Francesco Hayez.
3. Colorful blurring
The long exposure required to blur the hump of Gregor Deschwanden, of Switzerland, in a full jump during the tenth day of the Games at the Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium, allowed the photographer to extract the prismatic ghost from the skier's body of his presence in the frozen air.
The transformation of form into light recalls Hungarian painter Vilmos Huszár's 1915 tribute to Vincent van Gogh's bright vibrations, which he evokes from his post-impressionist alter ego, the sun flower, a spectral soul we feel as much as we see.
4. Monumental mountain
An ethereal photo of the snow-capped peaks overlooking the Stelvio Pass, looking through a tear in a patch of icy mist.
The fifth day of the Games in Bormio, Italy, has a distinctly mystical, floating-world feel ahead of the men's alpine skiing competition.
The image's gloomy reflection on stability and stillness reflects the landscape mentality of the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige at the end of the 19th century.
Snow-capped Kiso Mountains, one of three setsugetsuka (or "snow, moon and flowers") triptychs he created a year before his death.Here, monumental mountains almost dissolve before our eyes, reflecting on something mysterious that lies beyond them.
5. Visual vortex
There was a centripetal force in the gaze of German skater Annika Hocke, her head inches from the ice, peering through a narrow triangular hole formed by the crossed legs of her skating partner Robert Kunkel as she spun rapidly with her arms outstretched in a dangerous move known as the "death spiral" on the 11th day of the Olympics.
The neglect of the eye is the center of the picture, the photographer captured it amazingly, reflecting the view of meditation at the heart of what is forgotten in 18th century England, the so-called "small eyes."
6. Live vector
Marco Heinis' photograph of Team France flying through the air during the ski jumping test round on day five of the Games at the Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium in Val di Fiemme, Italy, is striking for its poignant grace.
With his body bent forward in full flight and his skis sharp as blades, he became a living vector, an axis intersecting with the sharp pines on which he seemed to float.
Heinis's linear cuts in the pale fabric of The Winter Room recall the contradictory cuts that Italian spatial artist Lucio Fontana made on monochromatic canvases such as Concetto spaziale, Attese ("Concept of Space, Expectation") from 1968, which present a unified philosophical surface that evokes a contemplative textual fissure.of our vision.
7. Mass and movement
Swiss Briar Schwaller-Hoerlemann, whose photographer's lens blurs the lines as she accelerates under the speed of polished stone, competing against Team Canada in the mixed doubles event on the fourth day of the Games.
Their consciousnesses have merged.This fusion of matter with mind and vice versa echoes the liquefaction of mass and movement that Umberto Boccioni achieved in his boundary-blurring bronze sculpture "Unique Continuous Forms in Space" (1913), a work as philosophical as it is physical.
8. Homa Levitacio
On the line between grace and gravity, between determined control and calm submission to the laws of nature, the photo of Belarusian-born Anastasia Andreyanava, a member of the Neutral Individual Athletes team (Russian and Belarusian individual athletes), competing in freestyle acrobatic skiing training, on the eighth day of the Snow Livigno Games (February Livigno). Limits of Human Height.
Remote space, weightless, but fast, speedy and icy air transforms into a pure aerodynamic form, its suspended suspension reminiscent of the Italian painter of Dalmatia Tulio Krali's 1939 painting "Airport", "before the airplane flies" and the open form of parachutes.
9. Dignity in Destruction
The image of American figure skater Ilya Malinin, whose acrobatic backstroke inspired spectators and judges, falling to the ice during the men's free skate on the seventh day of the Milan Games reveals the virtue of destruction.
Torso twisted and arms braced against the white marble surface, Malinin's hunched posture is reminiscent of a Roman statue of a dying gladiator (a century-earlier copy of a lost Greek sculpture from the 2nd century BC), deftly capturing the awkward twists and turns of a macho mind fighting a muscular mind.
10. Floating in space
A photo of South Korean snowboarder Geonhui Kim competing in the semifinals on day five of the Games at Livigno Snow Park - curled upside down under his board and forever trapped in a patch of frozen snow - captures the thrill of the action.
Suspended below the "NITRO" logo emblazoned on the board and surrounded by a dense glow of sparkling crystals, the athlete looks like a floating molecule vaporized in a curtain of scattered elements.
The choreographic suspension of color and energy brings to mind the beautiful pieces of form and figure in Jackson Pollock's enamel masterpieces.
11. Photos to send photos
Shadows can encourage movement.Nameless in the dark, the shadow-trapped figure often appears in an archetypal form: an edged body that transcends boundaries.
The power of multinational images of athletes taken on the third day of the Games at the Tesero Cross Country Ski Stadium, on Lago di Tesero (Val di Fiemme).
A shadow that casts a shadow, these fascinating but unknown figures recall the nature of future experiments that usurped her power.
In the Italian modernist Giacomo Balla's painting "Abstract Speed" from 1913, dark and light cogs are in a chromatic machine that transcends movement.
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