PRESS RELEASE
FRESH AS SPRING, PHILLIPS de PURY & COMPANY’S APRIL AUCTION OF
CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHS REPRESENTS SEVERAL
PRIVATE COLLECTORS
WORKS TO BE OFFERED RANGE FROM HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT THROUGH
TRENDSETTING MID-CENTURY MODERN TO THE CUTTING EDGE
Auction: April 26, 10am & 2pm Viewing: April 19-25
Private and institutional collections as well as an important estate reign, comprising a sale
featuring many rarely or never before seen images by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus,
Harry Callahan, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Douglas Duncan, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander,
Man Ray, Tina Modotti, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton and Garry Winogrand.
Introducing the fabulous x-ray imagery of the German scientist, Dr. Paul Fries.
New York, March 8, 2006 -- With the photography market attracting more attention than ever,
the Photographs department at Phillips de Pury & Company is pleased to offer its most
diverse and high quality sale to date. Headlining the auction are approximately 60 works from
a Private European Collection including important photographs from Man Ray to Mapplethorpe,
especially a breadth of iconic images such as Rudolf Koppitz’s Bewegundsstudie, 1925
($70,000 - $90,000), Ansel Adams’ Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941 ($25,000 - $35,000),
Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Rue Mouffetard, 1954 ($5,000 - $7,000), Richard Avedon’s Marilyn Monroe,
Actress, 1957 ($20,000 - $30,000), Helmut Newton’s Big Nude III, Henrietta, 1980 ($10,000 - $15,000)
and Peter Lindbergh’s The Wild Ones, 1990 ($20,000 - $30,000). Other private collections to be
represented include the Strauss Collection and the Künne Collection, both repeat consignors.
Diane Arbus, probably the most influential photographer of her generation, died in 1971, the result
of a suicide. She has since become a legend partly due to her estate closely guarding personal
information about her, creating a mysterious and intriguing figure. Finally, with the release of
the sanctioned retrospective and catalogue, Revelations, the public has become more familiar
than ever with Arbus’ history. We are very pleased to present for the first time in public, several
previously unknown works Arbus executed while on assignment in the 1960s from the collection
of Mr. John Gerbino, a prescient art director who hired her. The selection to be offered includes
several portraits of the feminist author, Germaine Greer, ($15,000 - $20,000 and $20,000 - $30,000)
and a personally inscribed postcard from Arbus to Mr. Gerbino featuring her signature image,
Identical Twins, Roselle, NJ, 1967 ($30,000 - $50,000).
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P H I L L I P S d e P U R Y & C O M PA N Y
A New York Private Collection contributes a trio of top lots for the spring. Man Ray’s Untitled
(Rayograph), 1926 ($250,000 - $350,000) is a classic example of the self-referential and diarist body
of unique images Man Ray concocted from the camera-less procedure of his eponymous
Rayographs. The example being offered is hypnotic and dangerous, a coiled rope, reminiscent of
the optical experiments he and Duchamp pursued five years prior. With its seductive concentric
curves drawing the viewer into a dream state, it is straight out of the Surrealist lexicon. Using
essentially the same process to very different ends, the Hungarian master of the Bauhaus,
László Moholy-Nagy produced photograms with a decidedly different purpose. Intrigued with the
very process of art making, Moholy utilized the simplest elements – light and photographic paper
– to create masterpieces of reductive Modernist thought. Moholy’s Fotogramm, 1925-1926 will be
offered at $100,000 - $150,000. The trifecta is completed with another rarity from the same era but
from the Americas. Tina Modotti, political activist and tragic heroine, a student and lover of
Edward Weston, had an earthier, more humanist eye than her mentor as shown in Hands of the
Puppeteer, Mexico, 1929 ($200,000 - $250,000).
Doris M. Bachrach was a passionate admirer and collector with an eye for the personal and
intimate image. Her taste varied from the classic to the courageous. Phillips de Pury & Company
will offer a selection of works from her estate in April as well as in our June 17th
SATURDAY@PHILLIPS sale. One of Robert Mapplethorpe’s favorite models, Ken Moody, was also
an acquaintance of Ms. Bachrach. She acquired two portraits by the photographer that will
be offered ($15,000 - 25,000 each). Both were gifts to the model, who then inscribed them
to the collector. Susan Derges’ fluid photogram The River Taw, 1998, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s bare
Baltic Sea, Rugen, 1996 ($20,000 - $30,000) and Robert Frank’s figure study, London, 1952
($25,000 - $35,000) are some of the estate’s holdings to be offered.
Tom Jacobson has garnered a well deserved reputation in the photography world as a
master sleuth for his remarkable reconstitution of the work of the French/Belgian proto-modernist
PIerre Dubreuil. Phillips de Pury is proud to work with Mr. Jacobson in presenting the latest of his
discoveries, the hitherto forgotten x-ray art produced by Dr. Paul Fries (pronounced "frieze")
in the early 1950's. Dr. Fries invented what he considered a new facet of Modern Art:
Ultra Fotografie, a body of artistic x-rays and photographic prints produced by industrial x-ray
machines, which explored new space relationships only "unseen" light could produce. Dr. Fries,
a nuclear physicist, headed the industrial x-ray division of Siemens in Erlangen, Germany.
Inspired by the new "Subjektive Fotographie" movement headed by Otto Steinert and the
New Vision propounded by Moholy-Nagy, Dr. Fries worked exhaustively in this extraodinary field
of modern art and photography from 1951 to 1955. Six works will be available with estimates
ranging from $6,000 - $8,000 to $12,000 - $18,000.
P H I L L I P S d e P U R Y & C O M PA N Y
The writer and champion of Alberto Giacometti and other artists, James Lord was also a friend
and confidant of the late Henri Cartier-Bresson. Several Cartier-Bresson photographs, gifts of
the photographer and extensively inscribed on the verso by the writer, are to be sold including
Alberto Giacometti in his studio, 1938 ($10,000 - $15,000).
In addition, the sale is peppered with several outstanding surprises. Stanley Kubrick,
the influential filmmaker began as a still photographer and works by him on the market
are extremely rare. A single work, Sleep, circa 1960 ($15,000 - $25,000) will be a unique
opportunity for collectors to acquire a work of the legendary genius of film. Robert Adams, one of
this country’s most significant landscape photographers, was included in the seminal exhibition,
“New Topographics” at the George Eastman House in 1975 along with Bernd and Hilla Becher,
Stephen Shore, Frank Gohlke and others. Since then, his sparse but passionate views of
the American landscape have been embraced by all facets of the photography, contemporary art
and museum worlds. A very early example in his topographic style, Outdoor theater, 1974
($7,000 - $9,000) is a trimmed, mounted exhibition print, rarely seen on the market.
The Brooklyn Museum will be offering three published portfolios to benefit the Museum’s
activities, including, Danny Lyon ($25,000 - $35,000); Edouard Boubat ($12,000 - $18,000) and
Ralph Gibson’s Chiaroscuro ($7,000 - $9,000).
Other significant artists also represented are: Julia Margaret Cameron, Sir John Herschel,
1867 ($90,000 - $120,000), property of a private New York collector and formerly in the collection
of Paul Walter; Richard Avedon, Dovima with Elephants ($100,000 – 150,000), property of a
West Coast collector; Thomas Ruff, 03 h 30m / -20º, 1992 ($60,000 - $80,000); Robert Frank’s
Hoboken, N.J. 1955 ($50,000 – $70,000); Lee Friedlander, Jazz and Blues, 1983, a portfolio of seven
dye transfer prints ($40,000 - $60,000); and a very rare early Garry Winogrand, New York, 1960
($20,000 - $30,000).
-EndsContacts:
Phillips de Pury & Company
Trish Walsh
+1 212 940 1224
[email protected]