BRAVO MANUEL ALVAREZ (1902 2002) Untitled (Window in Wall)

Sale 2124 - Lot 82

Price Realized: $ 33,600

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000

BRAVO, MANUEL ALVAREZ (1902-2002)
Untitled (Window in Wall). Silver print, 7x9 1/4 inches, with penciled notations, in an unidentified hand, on verso. 1938

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Originally from the collection of André Breton (1896-1966), the historic leader of the revolutionary surrealistic movement; to Galerie 1900/2000, Paris. Accompanied by a letter of provenance.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1997), 148.

André Breton catalogue (Paris: Camels Cohen, 2003), no. 5053 (variant).

Manuel Alvarez Bravo was raised during the brutal Mexican Revolution where he witnessed terrible atrocities. A self-taught photographer who produced photographs for 80 years, he was inspired by stylistic changes brought about by the European and American avant-garde. In the 1920s he befriended Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, who were then living in Mexico, and promoted his work to Folkways magazine. Bravo's photographs reflect Surreal tendencies in his unusual juxtapositions, which capture scenes of everyday life that have a timeless quality.

Breton's surrealist writings, introduced in 1924, championed a radical aesthetic sensibility, which ultimately influenced artistic spheres in the worlds of painting, photography and sculpture, in Europe, Mexico and the United States. Bravo's works were shown at the eponoymous Julien Levy Gallery, in Paris, in the 1930s and other venues known for surrealist imagery.

A variant of this image was shown at the Musée National d'Art Modern, Centre Pompidou, in 1991. See the catalogue for this exhibition, p. 322 and 481.