Alma Lavenson - Photographs New York Thursday, October 4, 2018 | Phillips

Photographs

New York Auction 4 October 2018

  • Provenance

    Collection of the artist's family

  • Exhibited

    Alma Lavenson, The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1933
    Alma Lavenson, California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside, 15 January- 23 February 1979; and traveling to University Art Museum, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 2 March- 13 April 1979; and The Oakland Museum, 6 November- 25 November 1979
    Alma Lavenson, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 8 March- 24 April 1988

  • Literature

    Ehrens, Alma Lavenson: Photographs, p. 47
    Heyman, Seeing Straight: The f.64 Revolution in Photography, p. 134

  • Catalogue Essay

    Another print of this image, in the collection of the Oakland Museum of Art, was titled Composition f.64 by Alma Lavenson. This alternate title refers to Group f.64, the organization of California photographers—among them Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Imogen Cunningham—who were united in promoting a “straight” approach to photography in direct response to the excesses of Pictorialism. A print of this image was included in the historic Group f.64 exhibition at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, in 1932. With its clean lines and highly detailed account of its subject, Lavenson’s photograph perfectly embodies Group f.64’s ideals. As of this writing, it is believed that the photograph offered here is one of only three extant early prints of the image.

134

Alma Lavenson

Composition

1933
Gelatin silver print.
9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in. (24.8 x 19.7 cm)
Signed in pencil on the mount; titled and dated in ink on an artist’s label affixed to the reverse of the mount.

Estimate
$10,000 - 15,000 

Sold for $23,750

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Photographs

New York Auction 4 October 2018