Irving Penn - Photographs New York Saturday, April 9, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

  • Literature

    Bulfinch Press, Still Life: Irving Penn Photographs 1938-2000, n.p; Knopf/Callaway, Irving Penn: Passage: A Work Record, p. 254

  • Catalogue Essay

    Irving Penn's still-life and found object photographs are heralded for their unique arrangements and clarity. In Red Apples, Penn rejects traditional decorative tools and backgrounds that so often characterize still-life images, and instead is concerned with the placement of the fruit to create compositional conformity. Pushing the boundaries of contemporary aesthetics, he offers an account of unaltered beauty and challenges the viewer to recognize his subject as such. Red Apples incorporates contemporary elements with its sharp lighting, single-dimensionality, and grotesque subject-matter while still paying homage to the traditional still-life genre.

  • Artist Biography

    Irving Penn

    American • 1917 - 2009

    Arresting portraits, exquisite flowers, luscious food and glamorous models populate Irving Penn's meticulously rendered, masterful prints. Penn employed the elegant simplicity of a gray or white backdrop to pose his subjects, be it a model in the latest Parisian fashion, a famous subject or veiled women in Morocco.

    Irving Penn's distinct aesthetic transformed twentieth-century elegance and style, with each brilliant composition beautifully articulating his subjects. Working across several photographic mediums, Penn was a master printmaker. Regardless of the subject, each and every piece is rendered with supreme beauty. 

    View More Works

44

Red Apples, July 15

1985
Dye destruction print.
36 7/8 x 29 1/4 in. (93.7 x 74.3 cm).
Signed, initialed, titled, dated in pencil and copyright credit reproduction limitation stamp on the verso. One from an edition of 17.

Estimate
$60,000 - 80,000 

Photographs

9 April 2011
New York