Abstract Photography
Abstract Photography
-
Marion Faller & Hollis Frampton, Apple Advancing, Gelatin silver print, 1975
MARION FALLER USA
HOLLIS FRAMPTON USA
Apple Advancing 1975
Signed: 782. Apple advancing [var. “Northern Spy”] from “Sixteen Studies from Vegetable Locomotion,” 1975 by Marion Faller & Hollis Frampton) on back of photograph; Marion Faller Hollis Frampton (in script on the bottom of the back of the photograph)
H: 10 7/8” x W: 13 7/8” (unframed)
H: 15 3/16 “ x W: 20 15/16” (framed)
-
Werner Mantz, Untitled, Gelatin silver print 1929
WERNER MANTZ (1901-1983) Germany
Untitled 1929 (vintage)
Silver gelatin print, patinated bronze frame
Signed: W. Mantz 1929 (in pencil on back)
Framed size: H: 8 ¾” x W: 11”
Price: $42,500
Werner Mantz is regarded as one of the most gifted architectural photographers of the twentieth century. His talent in this field we recognized early in his career and he received numerous commissions from a variety of prominent architects, first in Germany and later in the Netherlands. His work in Cologne especially, from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, forms a definitive statement of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement in architecture.
Works by Werner Mantz can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, Tate London and many more.
-
Edmund Kesting, Gears with hand, Photogram / Solarization c.1929
EDMUND KESTING (1882-1970) Germany
Gears with hand c.1929
Photogram / Solarization
Signed: Edmund Kesting 3644-280 (in pencil)
Provenance: Private Collection New York; Gene Prakapas Gallery New York 1970’s
Photogram: H: 7 9/16” x W: 6 15/16”
Frame: H: 15 9/16” x W: 14 15/16”Price: $19,500
During the 1920s, Kesting was at the center of the avant-garde movement in Germany, where he befriended Kurt Schwitters and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He first trained as a painter at the Akademie der Kunst in Dresden from 1911 to 1916. In the early 1920s, after service in World War I, he turned to collage and photography. An exhibitor at Herwarth Walden's Der Sturm gallery (Berlin), which supported German expressionism and the Blue Rider group, Kesting also operated several private art schools. The last, Der Weg (The Way), was closed by the Nazis in 1933. Kesting’s interest in the photographic portrait began in 1930, and often resulted in bold experimentation (Photomontages, superimpositions and solarizations) that provided some of the strongest examples of German expressionist portraiture in photography. In contrast to the objective naturalism of August Sander, his work is informed by the “Sturm und Drang” of the period – the storm and stress of the political, economic, and social unrest in Germany. After the war in 1948, Kesting taught at the Kunsthochschule in Berlin-Weissensee. – (partially excerpted from James Borcoman, Magicians of Light, National Gallery of Canada, 1993)
Works by Edmund Kesting can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Solarization — is a phenomenon in photography in which the image recorded on a negative or on a photographic print is wholly or partially reversed in tone. Dark areas appear light or light areas appear dark. The term is synonymous with the Sabattier effect when referring to negatives, but is technically incorrect when used to refer to prints. In short, the mechanism is due to halogen ions released within the halide grain by exposure diffusing to the grain surface in amounts sufficient to destroy the latent image.
-
Aram Gesar, Venetian Blinds, Ciba-chrome print 1979
ARAM GESAR USA
Venetian Blinds 1979
Ciba-chrome print, maple frame
Signed: 790069, LXXIX (on back)
Framed size: H: 17 9/16” x W: 23 ½”
Price: $24,000
Aram Gesar has been published internationally and has exhibited his photographic work in New York, San Francisco, Zurich and Geneva since 1977. As a producer, art director and photographer, Gesar created advertising campaigns for major corporations in the U.S. and Europe focusing on the fields of travel, banking, financial services, aerospace and motion pictures. He also created and produced documentaries on travel, aviation and yachting for national cable networks and the home video markets and television commercials and corporate programs for various U.S. and European corporations.
Gesar is currently one of the leading international experts on travel and air transport, and the founder and CEO of The Pyramid Media Group, which includes several magazines, newsletters, web sites, books, eBooks and other publications integrating a spectrum of business, travel and aviation content.
-
Donald Deskey, Barrels, Gelatin silver print, c.1925-30
DONALD DESKEY (1894-1989) USA
Barrels c.1925-30
Silver gelatin print, ebonized textured wood frame
Provenance: The Estate of Donald Deskey
H: 9 7/8” x W: 7 15/16”
Framed: H: 22” x W: 18”Price: $4,200
Donald Deskey was a native of Blue Earth, Minnesota. He studied architecture at the University of California, but did not follow that profession, becoming instead an artist and a pioneer in the field of Industrial design. In Paris he attended the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which influenced his approach to design. He established a design consulting firm in New York City, and later the firm of Deskey-Vollmer (in partnership with Phillip Vollmer) which specialized in furniture and textile design. His designs in this era progressed from Art Deco to Streamline Moderne.
He first gained note as a designer when he created window displays for the Franklin Simon Department Store in Manhattan in 1926. In the 1930's, he won the competition to design the interiors for Radio City Music Hall. In the 1940's he started the graphic design firm Donald Deskey Associates and made some of the most recognizable icons of the day. He designed the Crest toothpaste packaging, as well as the Tide bullseye. His company is still in operation in Cincinnati. A collection of his work is held by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. He is regarded the American pioneer of industrial design, and contemporary American graphic design.
-
Carlotta Corpron, Light Cubes, Gelatin silver print c. 1947
CARLOTTA CORPRON (1901-1988) USA
Light Cubes c. 1947
Silver gelatin print, patinated steel frame
Signed: Carlotta M. Corpron, Denton, Texas, RM6 #1081.47 (stamped on back)
Framed size: H: 13 ¾” x W: 16 ¾”
Price: $40,000
Corpron became a teacher at Texas Woman’s University in 1935 and in 1942 she led a light workshop at Texas Woman’s University for photographer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Although he praised her rapport with her students, Moholy-Nagy did not encourage Corpron’s independent photography. More influential on her work was the arrival of Gyorgy Kepes, who came to Denton to write a book in 1944. His interest in Corpron’s work prompted her to produce several series of photographs that were the most original of her career. At his suggestion Corpron experimented by placing white paper cut in simple shapes within a perforated box that was open at one end. When flashlights were shined through the holes onto the paper shapes, interesting patterns of light and shadow were reflected. The resulting abstract photographs comprised Corpron’s “Light Patterns” series.
In her “Light Follows Form” series she extended her exploration of the modeling properties of light to three-dimensional form. In this series, she used light filtered through Venetian blinds or glass to dramatize a plaster cast of a Greek head. She also experimented with solarization, a process in which already exposed negatives are exposed. Works such as Solarized Calla Lilies (1948) convey a surreal elegance, but Corpron favored more original methods of expression. She regarded her “Space Compositions” and “Fluid Light Designs” series as her best work. In the former she used still-lifes composed of eggs, nautilus shells, or glass paperweights, usually combined with a curving reflective surface, to produce an illusion of receding three-dimensional space. She emphasized distortions of form that occurred in her egg photographs by experimentation during the development process. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth.
-
Allen Porter, Filmstrips, Photogram vintage gelatin silver print 1947
ALLEN PORTER (b.1926) USA
Filmstrips 1947
Photogram vintage gelatin silver print
Size: (unframed): H: 11” x W: 14”
Size: (frame): H: 20” x W: 23”After attending art programs at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, Porter enrolled at the ID upon his return from military service in WWII. His course of study included graphic design and photography. His photograms were produced while working with famed ID photography instructors Frank Levstik and Ferenc Berko. Shortly after leaving the ID in 1949, Porter established a design office in Los Angeles during the height of the California modern design movement. He incorporated his innovative light work into design projects for important clients like Gruen Lighting and Carroll Sagar & Associates.
-
Lewis Hine, What It Costs The Child/Industry/Society, Silver gelatin print c. 1913-14
LEWIS HINE (1874-1940) USA
What It Costs The Child/Industry/Society c. 1913/14
Silver gelatin print
Signed in script on back
Framed size: H: 14 1/8” x W: 16 3/16”
Price: $20,000
***The same image is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Lewis Wickes Hine, photographer, sociologist and humanist, is best known for his insightful portraits of immigrants at Ellis Island and his unflinching views of housing and labor conditions in the United States. Studying and eventually teaching at the Ethical Culture School in New York City, Hine infused his humanist concerns into a style of documentary photography that set the standard for delivering a social message through his medium.
The Artist's Joke surveys the rich and diverse uses of satire by avant-garde and contemporary artists. The texts collected in this new reader from London's Whitechapel Gallery examine what Andre Breton called the “lightning bolt” of the unsettlingly comic, as seen in the anarchic wordplay of Duchamp, Picasso, the Dadaists, and Surrealists; Pop's fetish for kitsch and the comic strip; Bruce Nauman's sinister clowns and twisted puns; Richard Prince's joke paintings; art ambushed by feminist wit, from the Dadaism of Hannah Hoch in the 1920s to the politicized conceptualism of Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger in the 1980s; the serenely uncanny in Mike Kelley's installations and the risibly grotesque in Paul McCarthy's; and the strangely comic scenarios of artists as various as Maurizio Cattelan, Andrea Fraser, Raymond Pettibon, and David Shrigley. Artists' writings are accompanied and contextualized by the work of critics and thinkers including Freud, Bergson, Helene Cixous, Slavoj Zizek, Lewis Wickes Hine, Jorg Heiser, Jo Anna Isaak, and Ralph Rugoff.
-
Nathan Lerner, Dowels Light Box Study, Silver gelatin print c. 1937
NATHAN LERNER (1913-1997) Chicago, USA
Dowels Light Box Study c.1937
Silver gelatin print
Signed on back
Illustrated: New Bauhaus, 50 Jahre: Bauhausnachfolge in Chicago (Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv and Argon Verlag GmbH: 1987), p. 177
H: 18 5/8” x 22 ½” (framed)
Nathan Lerner’s long career was inextricably bound up in the history of visual culture in Chicago. Born in 1913 to immigrants from Ukraine, he began studying painting at the Art Institute of Chicago at the age of 16, taking up the camera to perfect his compositional skills. At 22 he began doing a kind of photojournalism, developing his well-known series on ”Maxwell Street,” an immigrant neighborhood hit hard by the Depression, and also photographing the southern Illinois mining area. In 1936 when the New Bauhaus was established in Chicago by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Lerner became one of its first scholarship students and turned increasingly to photographic experimentation. He began making semi-abstract, strongly Constructivist images involving luminous projections, solarization, photograms and other methods, and his interest in manipulating light led him to invent the first ”light box.” In 1939 he became the assistant of Gyorgy Kepes, head of the school’s light workshop; together, they wrote ”The Creative Use of Light” (1941). With Charles Niedringhaus in 1942 he developed a machine for forming plywood that was used in making most of the school’s furniture. After working as a civilian light expert for the Navy in New York during World War II, Lerner returned to the school, now called the Institute of Design, and was named education director after Moholy-Nagy’s death in 1946. He left in 1949, opening a design office that became nationally known for its furniture, building systems and glass and plastic containers (including bottles for Revlon and Neutrogena and the Honeybear honey container). In 1968 Lerner married Kiyoko Asia, a classical pianist from Japan, and over the next two decades made numerous trips to Japan, where he took his first color photographs, as well as Mexico. He had his first solo exhibition of photography in 1973 and thereafter exhibited regularly in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Japan. His work is included in photography and design collections around the world. (Roberta Smith, New York Times, February 15, 1997).
-
Andre Kertesz, Paris, Gelatin silver print 1927
ANDRÈ KÈRTESZ (1894-1985) Hungary
Paris 1927
Silver gelatin print
Signed: Paris 1927, A.Kertesz, Page 150 (in pencil on back); ANDRÈ KÈRTESZ (stamped on back).
Framed size: H: 16 5/8” x W: 17 13/16”
Throughout most of his career, Kertész was depicted as the “unknown soldier” who worked behind the scenes of photography, yet was rarely cited for his work, even into his death in the 1980s. His work itself is often described as predominantly utilizing light and even Kertész himself said that “I write with light”. He was never considered to “comment” on his subjects, but rather capture them – this is often cited as why his work is often overlooked; he stuck to no political agenda and offered no deeper thought to his photographs other than the simplicity of life. With his art’s intimate feeling and nostalgic tone, Kertész’s images alluded to a sense of timelessness that was inevitably only recognized after his death. Unlike other photographers, Kertész’s work gave an insight into his life, showing a chronological order of where he spent his time; for example, many of his French photographs were from cafés where he spent the majority of his time waiting for artistic inspiration. Although Kertész rarely received bad reviews, it was the lack of them that lead to the photographer feeling distant from recognition. Now however, he is often considered to be the father of photojournalism. Even other photographs cite Kertész and his photographs as being inspirational; Henri Cartier-Bresson once said of him in the early 1930s, “We all owe him a great deal”.
-
György Kepes, Abstraction, Gelatin silver print 1942
GYÖRGY KEPES (1906-2001) Hungary/USA
Abstraction 1942
Silver gelatin print
Signed: Gyorgy Kepes 1942 (in ink on back)
Framed size: H: 18 13/16” x W: 16”
György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus (later the School of Design, then Institute of Design, then Illinois Institute of Design or IIT) in Chicago. In 1947 He founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he taught until his retirement in 1974.
-
Thomas F. Barrow, Register Synthesis, Gelatin silver print photogram with applied spray paint, 1978
THOMAS F. BARROW (b. 1938) Kansas City, MO
Register Synthesis Photogram 1978
Gelatin silver print photogram with applied spray paint
Signed: Register Synthesis – 1978 – Thomas F. Barrow (in ink on back)
Exhibited: J.J. Brookings & Co. (San Jose, CA): Thomas F. Barrow: Inventories and Transformations, A Twenty Year Retrospective, Nov. 6 – Dec. 16, 1986. This exhibit occurred simultaneously with the following two museum shows: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Nov. 6, 1986 – Jan 11, 1987) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Feb. 26 – May 10, 1987).
Related photograph illustrated: Aperture: The New Vision: Forty Years of Photography, no. 87 (New York: Aperture Foundation, Inc., 1987), cover image.
Framed size: H: 19 5/8” x W: 23 7/16”
Thomas Barrow, American was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He studied at the Art Institute of Design in Chicago, Illinois and received his M.A. in 1967. At the George Eastman House, Barrow was the Assistant Director from 1971 to 1972 and served as the Associate Director of the University of New Mexico Art Museum from 1973 to 1976. Barrow started teaching photography in 1976 in the Art Department of the University of New Mexico and by 1985 he became the Acting Director of the University Art Museum. His Midwestern academic pedigree includes studying with Aaron Siskind at the Art Institute of Design in Chicago and with filmmaker Jack Ellis at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Barrow has received two NEA Photographers Fellowships in 1973 and 1978.
Barrow has produced a series of silver-gelatin photograms and then applied spray paint to the prints. These combine the feeling of a split-toned black and white print and at the same time appear as color-print photograms. He has produced a series of photograms entitled Disjunctive Forms. His images appear as surreal assemblages of various found and created objects superimposed with stencil text. Barrow works in the “academic” tradition—his pictures are deliberately and consistently experimental, highly intellectualized, scholarly in their concerns, and chock-full of references to the work of other artists.
-
György Kepes, Abstraction, Gelatin silver print, 1942
GYÖRGY KEPES (1906-2001) Hungary/USA
Abstraction 1942
Silver gelatin print
Signed: 9 (in a circle, on back); Gyorgy Kepes 1942 (in ink on back)
György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus (later the School of Design, then Institute of Design, then Illinois Institute of Design or IIT) in Chicago. In 1947 He founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he taught until his retirement in 1974.
Framed size: H: 29 3/16” x W: 25 ¼”
-
John Gutmann, D.O.S. Apology, Gelatin silver print, 1938
JOHN GUTMANN (1905-1998) USA
D.O.S. Apology 1938
Signed: 290.6, M 3 (in a circle), 5, © John Gutmann, SP, D.O.S. Apology 1938 (all in pencil on back of photo)
Framed size: H: 12 1/8“ x W: 14 3/8”
John Gutmann was a German-born American photographer and painter. After fleeing Nazi Germany to the United States, Gutmann acquired a job as a photographer for various German magazines. Gutmann quickly took an interest in the American way of life and sought to capture it through the lense of his camera. He especially took an interest in the Jazz music scene. Gutmann is recognized for his unique “worm's-eye view” camera angle. He enjoyed taking photos of ordinary things and making them seem special.His work was shown in important galleries such as Castelli's in NYC, Fraenkel in San Francisco, and the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris. After his death, Gutmann’s oeuvre was given to the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.
-
Berenice Abbott, Beams of Light Through Prism, Gelatin silver print, c. 1960
BERENICE ABBOTT (1898-1991) USA
Beams of Light Through Prism c. 1960
Silver gelatin print
Signed: BERENICE ABBOTT (in pencil below photo)
H: 25 ½” x W: 26 7/16” (framed)
-
Thomas F. Barrow, Ready Made, Gelatin silver print photogram with applied spray paint, 1978
THOMAS F. BARROW (b. 1938) Kansas City, MO
Ready Made Photogram 1978
Gelatin silver print photogram with applied spray paint
Signed: Ready Made – 1978 – Thomas F. Barrow (in ink on back)
Exhibited: J.J. Brookings & Co. (San Jose, CA): Thomas F. Barrow: Inventories and Transformations, A Twenty Year Retrospective, Nov. 6 – Dec. 16, 1986. This exhibit occurred simultaneously with the following two museum shows: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Nov. 6 – Jan 11, 1987) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Feb. 26 – May 10, 1987).
Related photograph illustrated: Aperture: The New Vision: Forty Years of Photography, no. 87 (New York: Aperture Foundation, Inc., 1987), cover image.Framed size: H: 19 5/8” x W: 23 7/16”
-
Donald Deskey, Papier-Abfälle, Gelatin silver print, c.1925-30
DONALD DESKEY (1894-1989) USA
Papier-Abfälle c.1925-30
Provenance: The Estate of Donald Deskey
H: 9 7/8” x W: 7 15/16”
Framed: H: 22” x W: 18”Donald Deskey was a native of Blue Earth, Minnesota. He studied architecture at the University of California, but did not follow that profession, becoming instead an artist and a pioneer in the field of Industrial design. In Paris he attended the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which influenced his approach to design. He established a design consulting firm in New York City, and later the firm of Deskey-Vollmer (in partnership with Phillip Vollmer) which specialized in furniture and textile design. His designs in this era progressed from Art Deco to Streamline Moderne.
He first gained note as a designer when he created window displays for the Franklin Simon Department Store in Manhattan in 1926. In the 1930's, he won the competition to design the interiors for Radio City Music Hall. In the 1940's he started the graphic design firm Donald Deskey Associates and made some of the most recognizable icons of the day. He designed the Crest toothpaste packaging, as well as the Tide bullseye. His company is still in operation in Cincinnati. A collection of his work is held by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. He is regarded the American pioneer of industrial design, and contemporary American graphic design.
-
Grant Mudford, Containers, Gelatin silver print, 1979
GRANT MUDFORD (1944- ) Australia
Containers 1979
Gelatin silver print
Signed and dated on back
Framed size: H: 26 ½” x W: 30 ¾”
“Since he moved to Los Angeles from Australia in the late 1970s, Grant Mudford has composed photographs that crisply examine the streamlined geometries of West Coast architecture and landscape. Mudford has zeroed in on the abstract formal relationships lurking within the designs of gas stations, strip malls and apartment buildings. The geometrical arrangements highlighted in his photographs of the masterful modernist structures of Rudolf Schindler and Craig Ellwood have disclosed a link between their midcentury architecture and the contemporaneous hard-edge abstractions of L.A. painters John McLaughlin and Lorser Feitelson.” – Art in America, “Grand Mudford at Rosamund Felsen, September 2003
-
György Kepes, Lens Refraction, Gelatin silver print, 1939
GYÖRGY KEPES (1906-2001) Hungary/USA
Lens Refraction 1939
Signed: 6 (in a circle, on back); Gyorgy Kepes 1939 (in pencil on back)
Illustrated: New Bauhaus, 50 Jahre: Bauhausnachfolge in Chicago (Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv and Argon Verlag GmbH: 1987), p. 185
Framed size: H: 27 1/8” x W: 22 ¼”
György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus (later the School of Design, then Institute of Design, then Illinois Institute of Design or IIT) in Chicago. In 1947 He founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he taught until his retirement in 1974.
-
Pierre Boucher, Propeller, Gelatin silver print, 1935
PIERRE BOUCHER (1908-2000) France
Propeller 1935
Signed: WB – 7252; Photo Pierre Boucher (ink stamp); DBoucher (ink signature)
Provenance: Gene Prakapas Gallery, New York, 1978.
H: 7 1/16” x W: 9 ¼” (unframed)
H: 14 11/16” x 16 11/16” (framed)
Pierre Boucher came to photography as a result of the Nouvelle Vision and he explored photography as an experiment on all levels, photograms, collages, solarization and superimposition. He had a natural curiosity and a cultivated and sporty demeanor that led him to produce work as diverse as surrealist nudes and well-constructed advertisements. Whether it be in documentary photography or industrial photography, Pierre Boucher always awakens an empathy and a feeling of closeness with his subjects in the spectator.
Pierre Boucher got his start in advertising, taking his inspiration from the graphic techniques of the modernists in the field and contributing to the transformation of the advertising photo into a work of art. He used photomontage to make his work more striking and effective, making unnerving and astonishing.
Boucher’s nudes, on the other hand, use no technical prowess whatsoever. After the war the movement for freedom of the body led him to reconsider social models. Pierre Boucher revisited the female and male nude from several angles. Around 1931, he did his first nude photos under the umbrella of the “ New Objectivity ” : the image was boxed, the frame strict, the bodies freed from their faces. From 1933 onwards his nudes became surrealist inspired by the work of Man Ray. He then moved on to neo-classical nudes. In studio or in natural light his Apollonian nude aimed above all for beauty and harmony.