André Kertész - Photographs from the Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago London Monday, November 17, 2014 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Estate of the photographer via Susan Harder and Edwynn Houk Gallery, 1986
    Gift of Paul J. Linker, 1986

  • Literature

    Ducrot, Distortions: André Kertész, n.p.

  • Catalogue Essay


    Stemming from a commissioned assignment from the Parisian men’s magazine Le Sourire (The Smile), André Kertész’s Distortion images are today considered a cornerstone of European photography between the wars. Over a period of four weeks, Kertész held eight different sessions with two hired models, Najinskaya Verackhatz and Nadia Kasine, whom he posed with a combination of fun-house mirrors. The relationship of the morphed body forms in the Distortions and those in contemporaneous painting and sculpture was early pointed out in captions to the twelve Distortion images published in the March 2, 1933 issue of Le Sourire.

    All but one of the Distortion prints being offered in lots 26, 34 and 35 are prints Kertész made between the early months of 1933, shortly after he took the negatives, and 1936, when he left Paris for New York. Most have his 1931-1936 Parisian studio stamp on the verso and all are printed on a single weight warm toned glossy paper, trimmed with no margins. The majority of these prints were part of a large group that was donated to the Art Institute of Chicago following the major 1985 retrospective, André Kertész: Of Paris and New York.

26

Distortion #52

1933
Gelatin silver print.
24 x 18 cm (9 1/2 x 7 1/8 in.)
Numbered '52' twice in ink, pencil and credit stamp on the verso.

Estimate
£3,000 - 4,000 ‡♠

Sold for £4,375

Contact Specialist
Lou Proud
Head of Photographs
London
+ 44 207 318 4018

Photographs from the Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago

London 18 November 2014 2pm