BAYER, HERBERT<>
"Pfeifenritter" [Smoking Knight]. Silver print, 11 3/4x7 1/2 inches (29.8x19 cm.), with Bayer's signature, date, title, and the notations "vintage," in pencil, on verso. 1930
Estimate $30,000-40,000

from the estate of herbert bayer.<> This humorous and surrealist photograph by Bayer, a champion of modernist photography, was one of 3 images he produced in which the medieval knight figures prominently. In another pose the figure is smelling flowers through his closed helmet; and in the third image he is casually posing by a bicycle. Bayer had an affection for this series and wrote of the studies: "In 1930, I was with a group of European artists invited by Madame de Mandrot to her 11th century castle, La Sarrez, [which was] in the French part of Switzerland. . . In the castle was armor and we were allowed to play with it and dress up. [This is] one of the three in which the knight appears in a surrealist (or contradictory) situation." The figure wearing the head gear is Friedrich Vordemberge-Guidewart, a German artist who founded "Gruppe K" (together with Hans Nitschke), and was a member of the Berlin group "Der Sturm," with Schwitters, Arp, and Van Doesburg.

This print was exhibited in a show curated by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art , in New York, from October 31, 1977-January 29, 1978. The image is reproduced in numerous publications, including:<> herbert bayer: photographic works<> (Los Angeles: Arco Center for Visual Art, 1977); and <>fotoauge herbert bayer <>(Munich: Galerie Klihm, 1967).<> See Arthur Cohen's<> herbert bayer, the complete work<> (Cambridge and London, 1984), p. 258.<>

Sale 1947 - Lot 80

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