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Carl Van VechtenCARL VAN VECHTEN PHOTOGRAPH OF BALLERINA ALICIA MARKOVA AUTOGRAPHED 19411941
1941
About the Item
Original Vintage Gelatin Silver Photograph by CARL VAN VECHEN of ballerina ALICIA MARKOVA autographed and inscribed to fellow Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo star dancer GEORGE (YURI) ZURICH in 1941.
This outstanding art photograph brings three prominent 20th Century iconic artists together immediately before the U.S. entered World War II - it is a unique gem of mid 20th Century dance and theater historic memorabilia.
The photograph measures 7 5/8 x 10 inches and is on heavy photographic paper with deep rich tones that were only available with the early gelatin silver process due to the amount of silver necessary in development.
“Photograph by Carl Van Vechten” is embossed in the lower left corner. On verso is stamped “Photograph by Carl Van Vechten 101 Central Park West Cannot be reproduced without Permission”. “IS.19” is written in ink.
CARL VAN VECHTEN (June 17, 1880 – December 21, 1964) was an American writer and photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein. He gained fame and notoriety as a writer for his controversial 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. In his later years, he took up photography and took many portraits of the most notable people in the music, arts, dance, film and social elite including Tallulah Bankhead, Paul Cadmus, Salvador Dali, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Henri Matisse, Anthony Tudor, Orson Welles and many, many others. Although he was married to women for most of his adult years, Van Vechten engaged in numerous homosexual affairs over his lifetime as is now recognized as a prominent figure in the gay cultural and social movements of the early and mid 20th Century. As one of the early 20th Century’s leading art photographers Van Vechten greatly influencing the work of George Platt Lynes, Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Leibovitz and many outstanding ‘beefcake’ photographers of the 1950s and 1960s.
The Library of Congress has 1,400 of Van Vechten’s photographs in their collection and he is represented in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian American Art Museum, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Art Museum, The National Portrait Gallery in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and many other prominent collections throughout the world.
DAME ALICIA MARKOVA (1910 –2004) was a leading British ballerina, choreographer, director and teacher of classical ballet most noted for her career with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. She toured internationally and was widely considered to be one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of the twentieth century. She was the first British dancer to become the principal dancer of a ballet company and, with Dame Margot Fonteyn, is one of only two English dancers to be recognized as a prima ballerina assoluta. Markova was a founding dancer in the Rambert Dance Company, The Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, and was co-founder and director of the English National Ballet. She joined Ballet Russes when she was 14 years old and throughout her career danced and work alongside the greatest celebrities in the arts, music and dance including Picasso, Matisse, Igor Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Massine, Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Margot Fonteyn, and Anton Dolin. Markova is best remembered for her roles as Giselle, The Dying Swan and Les Sylphides. In this Carl van Vechten photograph she appears in her role from Les Sylphides.
The inscription in red ink… “For dear Yuri. With my love to a very kind & sweet person. Alicia. 1941”.
Yuri was George Zoritch (born Yuri Zoritch 1917– 2009), a Russian-born ballet dancer who was also a star dancer is the the Ballet Russes company throughout Europe, South America and the United States in the 1930s. In the early 1940s he came to Hollywood and over the next decade was a featured dancer in 8 major films working with Alexis Smith, Cary Grant, Eleanor Parker, Errol Flynn, Ray Bolger, Gordon MacRae, Victor Mature, Hedy Lamarr and others. He returned to ballet in the 1950s to revive the legendary roles of Nijinski specifically “Spectre de la Rose” and “Afternoon of a Faun” with Le Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo. Zoritch was internationally known as one of the most glamorous figures and striking personalities in mid-twentieth-century ballet. He was a regular and iconic model for photographers Carl van Vechten, George Platt Lynes, and Maurice Seymour. In the first draft of his autobiography “Dance Mystique” Zoritch claimed to have had an affair with Flynn which helped lead to the breakup of Flynn and his first wife Lili Damita in 1942.
- Creator:Carl Van Vechten (1880 - 1964, American)
- Creation Year:1941
- Dimensions:Height: 10 in (25.4 cm)Width: 7.63 in (19.39 cm)Depth: 0.07 in (1.78 mm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:Aesthetic Movement
- Period:
- Condition:Excellent condition.
- Gallery Location:Glenford, NY
- Reference Number:Seller: Carl Van Vechten photograph of Alicia Markova 1stDibs: LU2458215300072
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