Irving Penn - Photographs New York Wednesday, October 11, 2023 | Phillips
  • One of the principal fashion photographers of our age, Irving Penn spent his career documenting the worlds of couture and beauty in his own highly innovative and elegant style. Penn mastered the existing vocabulary of fashion photography early on and then expanded upon it to create a new ideal, in many instances redefining what constituted beauty in a photograph. In Red Lips, New York, Penn wittily pairs the beautiful with the grotesque. Adopting the technique of multiple exposure, Penn projects a pair of giant red lips over his model’s mouth whose wrapped lips provide a perfect screen for this superimposition. 

    • Provenance

      Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
      Private European Collection

    • 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

209

Red Lips, New York

2005
Pigment print.
15 x 17 in. (38.1 x 43.2 cm)
Signed, initialed thrice, titled, dated, annotated in ink, credit, copyright credit reproduction limitation and edition stamps on the reverse of the flush-mount. One from an edition of 12.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$25,000 - 35,000 

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com

 

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 11 October 2023