34
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Grain Elevators
- Estimate
- $50,000 - 70,000
$50,000
Lot Details
Six gelatin silver prints.
1986
Each 12 1/8 x 15 7/8 in. (30.8 x 40.3 cm)
Signed by both artists and inscribed with a sequence map in pencil on the reverse of the mount of print 1; each print sequentially numbered 1-6 and lettered 'F' in pencil on the reverse of the mount.
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
"We want to offer the audience a point of view, or rather a grammar, to understand and compare the different structures. Through photography, we try to arrange these shapes and render them comparable. To do so, the objects must be isolated from their context and freed from all association." - Bernd and Hilla Becher
Provenance
Literature
Bernd and Hilla Becher
GermanHusband and wife Bernd and Hilla Becher began photographing buildings and relics of the Industrial Revolution, such as coal mines and cooling towers, in 1959. Like objective scientists removing a specimen from the field, the Bechers framed their subject in a manner that isolated it from its environment. Often, these stark, beautifully detailed prints were then displayed in grid-like structures, forming stunning 'Typologies'.By the time Bernd Becher became a professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1976 (policy would not allow Hilla to be a simultaneous appointment), the Bechers' photographs, with their seemingly neutral point of view and serial display, were already being applauded by the international art world as important works of Minimal and Conceptual Art.
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