Property from a Distinguished Curator’s Collection
243
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Water Towers
- Estimate
- $50,000 - 70,000
$138,600
Lot Details
Six gelatin silver prints, printed and assembled no later than 1980.
1963-1980
Each approximately 12 x 15 3/4 in. (30.5 x 40 cm)
Signed by both artists with a sequence map in pencil on the reverse of the mount of one print; sequentially numbered 'Q1 - Q6' in pencil on the reverse of each mount.
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
Titles include: Recklinghausen, D, 1966; Bochum, D, 1965; Temploux/Namur, B, 1974; Dippach, L, 1980; Göttelborn, Saarland, D, 1976; and Köln, Färbergasse, D, 1963
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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