Mar 23, 2010 - Sale 2208

Sale 2208 - Lot 74

Price Realized: $ 6,480
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
STIEGLITZ, ALFRED (1864-1946)
Archive of 6 letters to his friend Clifford Odets. 4 Autograph Letters Signed and 2 Letters Signed on 10 pages, each about 11x8 inches (28x20.3 cm.); with original envelopes addressed by Stieglitz. 'An American Place,' New York, 1944 and 1946
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Additional Details

Acquired from Clifford Odets's son via a Santa Barbara, CA agent.
Stieglitz was an aesthetic mentor to the leftist playwright Clifford Odets. By the time of these letters, Stieglitz was entering his eighties and though Odets was just approaching his forties, his own career was beginning a steep decline. Stieglitz's letters possess an unusual vibrancy, in part because they have more visual appeal than most correspondence, written in a timeless calligraphy and laid out like free verse. The letters discuss mutual friends such as director Harold Clurman, writer Waldo Frank, artist John Marin, and Stieglitz's lover Dorothy Norman. He mentions the difficulty of 'keeping the torch burning at 80 with a heart that says Nay Nay & a spirit that cries out Yea Yea.' Responding to Odets's news that his wife was expecting, Stieglitz replied 'My love to the unborn child. Yours. Hers. My love to her too. The mother.' The last letter was written less than a month before Stieglitz died.