Aaron Siskind

Morocco 93 by Aaron Siskind, 1982, Photogravure

1982

Two 10 x 8 in., vintage gelatin silver prints by Ida Lansky. Artist stamp on prints' verso. Ida G. Lansky was born in 1910 in Toronto, Canada. She pursued many careers in her lifetime including Nursing, Art, and Library Science. In 1928 she moved to New York City and later attended New York University, The Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, NY and Cornell University. In 1942 she received a B.S. in Public Health Nursing. Ida Lansky moved to Hawaii in 1945 and married Irving Lansky. She then moved to Norman, Oklahoma and then to Denton, Texas where she studied art and was mother to two children, Ellen and Michele. From 1954 - 1959 she was in the Visual Art studies program at Texas Women’s University in Denton with an emphasis on photography. She studied under Carlotta Corpron. 1959 marked a peak in her art career when she exhibited her photographs in a group exhibition curated by Henry Holmes Smith...

Contemplation by Ida Lansky depicts a group of three statues. The figures are turned towards each other and away from the viewer, as if talking in secret. This photograph is listed as a 9.5 x 7.5 inch vintage silver gelatin print. It is signed and titled in pencil on mount margin by the artist. Ida G. Lansky was born in 1910 in Toronto, Canada. She pursued many careers in her lifetime including Nursing, Art, and Library Science. In 1928 she moved to New York City and later attended New York University, The Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, NY and Cornell University. In 1942 she received a B.S. in Public Health Nursing. Ida Lansky moved to Hawaii in 1945 and married Irving Lansky. She then moved to Nor- man, Oklahoma and then to Denton, Texas where she studied art and was mother to two children, Ellen and Michele. From 1954 - 1959 she was in the Visual Art studies program at Texas Women’s University in Denton with an emphasis on photography. She studied under Carlotta Corpron...

Marc Vaux, a figure of Montparnasse, pro­duced a trove of pho­tographs which are cur­rently held in the col­lec­tion of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. Marc Vaux was com­mitted equally to sup­porting artists, notably by cre­ating the Foyer des Artistes (1946-70) and, in 1951, the first Musée du Montparnasse at 10, rue de l’Arrivée. Marc Vaux was born on February 19, 1895 in Crulai, Normandy Thanks to the color mer­chant from whom he bought his plates and his pho­to­graphic equip­ment, he met the sculptor Charles Desvergnes winner of Prix the Rome and author of var­ious memo­rials who was looking for someone to pho­tographs his works. Two of Marc Vaux’s first clients were his neigh­bors of 21 Avenue du Maine- Marie Vassilieff and Maria Blanchard...

José Yalenti, (1895-1967) Brazilian Photographer "Beiras" (Sides) Photo, numbered 5/15, circa 1950, (printed later) on premium luster photo paper with ultrachrome ink. Art: 15" H x 11" W; Frame: 20 1/4" H x 14 1/4" W. Provenance: Dickinson Roundell Gallery José Yalenti’s Architecture photos seem at first disorienting, abstract black & white and grey surfaces, cut through by startlingly straight lines and a variety of surface textures. Much of his work is of mid-century Latin American architecture, by the likes of Oscar Niemeyer and Roberto Burle Marx. José Yalenti was born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1895. On April 28, 1939, a group of photography aficionados, including Yalenti, formed the Foto Clube Bandeirante, later changed to Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, or FCCB. Starting in the late 1940s, a contingent of FCCB photographers began creating photographs of abstracted architectural motifs (as in Architecture or Twilight), and eventually became known as the Escola Paulista, or “Paulista School.” Yalenti was among the members of the unofficial Paulista School. Between 1945 and 1960, the Paulista School photographers explored the rapidly changing formal qualities of São Paulo. By photographing skyscrapers and stairways at steep angles, creating closely cropped compositions from found geometric motifs, and capturing the flattening effects of shadows, Paulista School photographers investigated the new physical perspectives emerging in the urban environment. They created a distinctively Modern aesthetic that used strong contrasts of light and dark, geometric forms, linear compositions, and collapsed space to assert photography’s status as an artistic medium. As part of their pursuit of photographic Modernism, Yalenti and his fellow Brazilians adapted the stylistic innovations of U.S. and European photographers such as f.64, New Objectivity, Dada, Surrealism, and the Bauhaus, to the Brazilian context. Along with his FCCB compatriots—Thomaz Farkas, Geraldo de Barros, and German Lorca, among others—Yalenti explored the formal properties of black-and-white image-making. Yalenti and the Paulista’s School’s abstract photographs responded to the new trends in Brazilian Modernist architecture being developed by young architects in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In 1939, Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, and Affonso Reidy broke ground on the Ministry of Education and Health Building (MES), the building that would define Brazilian architectural modernism. The Rio-based team combined elements of Le Corbusier’s undecorated structural purity with Brazilian regional design to produce a more organic and “tropical” Modernism that responded to the local culture and climate. The sinuous and sensuous curves of Yalenti’s photograph are directly influenced by stylistic developments in architecture at the MES, including the building’s covered entry and its organically abstract contours. By 1957, when Yalenti created Architecture or Twilight, Brazil was globally recognized as an architectural leader. MoMA in New York City organized a popular exhibition of Brazilian architecture in 1943 (“Brazil Builds”), and highlighted the country again in its survey show "Latin American Architecture since 1945," that ran from 1955–56. Brazilian photography...