PENN, IRVING (1917-2009) Pablo Picasso, Cannes. Silver print, 22 3/4x22 1/2 inches (57.8x57.2 cm.), with Penn's signature and date, his hand stamp, and a typed label with Penn's credit and copyright information, on mount verso. 1957; printed circa 1962
Gifted by Penn, in 1962, to his friend and colleague Steve Frankfurt, who was president of Young & Rubicam; gifted by Frankfurt, that same year, to his brother, Michael.
"Penn has never changed his first idea of portraiture: he has merely simplified what at first seemed almost irreducibly simple, so that by the late 50s even the anonymous studios disappeared and there remained no environment at all, only a wordless conversation between the photographer and the sitter." --John Szarkowski
Penn, Moments Preserved, Simon & Schuster, 1960, p. 39; Penn, Passage: A Work Record, Jonathan Cape, 1991, p. 125; Greenough, Irving Penn: Platinum Prints, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 2005, p. vi & pl. 37.
