Robert Mapplethorpe - Photographs London Wednesday, May 15, 2019 | Phillips

Create your first list.

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

  • Provenance

    Françoise Lambert Gallery, Milan, 1987

  • Literature

    Mapplethorpe: Pistils, New York: Random House, 1996, p. 77
    R. Mapplethorpe, Flora: The Complete Flowers, London: Phaidon, 2016, p. 256

  • Artist Biography

    Robert Mapplethorpe

    American • 1946 - 1989

    After studying drawing, painting and sculpture at the Pratt Institute in the 1960s, Robert Mapplethorpe began experimenting with photography while living in the notorious Chelsea Hotel with Patti Smith. Beginning with Polaroids, he soon moved on to a Hasselblad medium-format camera, which he used to explore aspects of life often only seen behind closed doors.

    By the 1980s Mapplethorpe's focus was predominantly in the studio, shooting portraits, flowers and nudes. His depiction of the human form in formal compositions reflects his love of classical sculpture and his groundbreaking marriage of those aesthetics with often challenging subject matter. Mapplethorpe's style is present regardless of subject matter — from erotic nudes to self-portraits and flowers — as he ceaselessly strove for what he called "perfection of form."

    View More Works

88

Hyacinth

1986
Gelatin silver print, flush-mounted.
48.9 x 48.9 cm (19 1/4 x 19 1/4 in.)
Signed, dated and numbered 5/10 in ink in the margin; signed by the photographer, dated in copyright credit reproduction limitation stamp, titled, dated and numbered in another hand in ink on the reverse of the flush-mount.

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for £25,000

Contact Specialist
Genevieve Janvrin
Co-Head of Department, Photographs
Yuka Yamaji
Co-Head of Department, Photographs

General Enquiries
+44 20 7318 4087

Photographs

London Auction 16 May 2019