Oct 17, 2019 - Sale 2520

Sale 2520 - Lot 79

Price Realized: $ 42,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON (1908-2004)
Gestapo informer recognized by a woman she had denounced, Dessau, Germany. Ferrotyped silver print, the image measuring approximately 6 3/4x9 1/2 inches (17.1x24.1 cm.), the sheet slightly larger, with Cartier-Bresson's hand stamp, a Museum of Modern Art hand stamp, and a typewritten caption label, on verso. 1945; printed 1947

Additional Details

Acquired from Swann Galleries, New York, October 14, 1992; to a Private New York Collector.

During World War II, Cartier-Bresson escaped a prisoner of war camp after being held captive for three years. Subsequently he returned to the United States to prepare an exhibition of his work at The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition catalogue The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson was published in 1947, and contained essays by Lincoln Kirstein and Beaumont Newhall. According to Peter Galassi: "Beaumont and Nancy Newhall had begun work on the exhibition during the war, before it was known that Cartier-Bresson had survived; thus the photographer had the rare opportunity of participating in his own 'posthumous' exhibition."

Arbaizar and Clair, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Image and The World (Thames & Hudson), pl. 79.

Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster / Éditions Verve), pl. 34.

Chéroux, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Here and Now (Thames & Hudson), pl. 205.
Clair, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Europeans (Thames & Hudson), p. 147.

Galassi, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), p. 106.

Kirstein and Newhall, The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), p. 40.

Montier, Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art (Thames & Hudson), pl. 151.