Grace Kelly
View Similar Items
Grace Kelly
About the Item
- Creator:Irving Penn (Photographer)
- Dimensions:Height: 6.25 in (15.88 cm)Width: 4.25 in (10.8 cm)Depth: 0.1 in (2.54 mm)
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1960s
- Condition:
- Seller Location:London, GB
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU989113455432
Irving Penn
With a career in magazines that spanned the mid-20th century heyday of print journalism and lasted through the first decade of the 21st, Irving Penn was the preeminent photographer for six decades at Vogue, where he worked right up until his death, in 2009, at age 92.
Penn’s refined and dynamic photography of models, celebrities and products like Clinique and Jell-O pudding, all shot in compositions of stunning equipoise in the cool remove of his minimal studio setups, were designed to stop traffic and cut through the clutter of magazine pages.
Penn flourished under the mentorship of two legendary art directors: Harper’s Bazaar‘s Alexey Brodovitch and Vogue‘s Alexander Liberman, both Russian émigrés like Penn’s father. Brodovitch introduced Penn to Surrealism and avant-garde photography as his teacher at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art and hired him as his assistant at Harper’s Bazaar during the summers of 1937 and ’38. Penn bought his first camera after graduating that year. He met Liberman in 1941, passing off to the recent New York transplant his freelance art director job at Saks Fifth Avenue. Liberman returned the favor by hiring Penn at Vogue in 1943 to sketch cover concepts, later encouraging him to shoot his unconventional juxtapositions of accessories and household items himself.
Assigned to photograph some portraits in the mid-1940s, Penn took a cue from the stage-set windows at Saks. He angled two studio flats in his studio and placed his subjects, including Truman Capote, Jerome Robbins and Salvador Dalí, in the resulting tight corner, literally and psychologically. Spencer Tracy leans jauntily against the walls in his portrait, while Georgia O'Keeffe simmers straight-armed in her confinement.
Penn didn’t work well with the distractions of the outside world. In 1950, when he was instructed by Liberman to buy an evening jacket and shoot the couture shows in Paris, he managed the assignment by having the dresses brought to him. He rented a top-floor studio with great light but no electricity and photographed models, including Lisa Fonssagrives (whom he married shortly after), against a mottled gray theater curtain that he continued to use for the rest of his career. Between deliveries from Dior and Balenciaga, he began his personal project “Small Trades,” in which he had local Parisians — a knife grinder, a mailman, a cucumber seller — pose for him with tools of their trade against the same backdrop. (He extended the series in London and New York.)
While Penn made bold, reductive still lifes for advertising campaigns throughout his career, in 1972 he applied his sculptural understanding of form to the unlikeliest of subjects: cigarette butts he gathered from the streets. The Museum of Modern Art showed Penn’s cigarette butts in 1975, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited another series of material salvaged from the street in 1977. At this time, Penn also began revisiting his earlier photographs, reprinting them at larger scale and with the more painterly quality achieved with the platinum-palladium process. In his lush, oversized platinum-palladium prints, he elevates the lowly castoffs to heroic objects worthy of archaeological scrutiny.
Find vintage Irving Penn photography on 1stDibs.
- Grace KellyLocated in London, GBOriginal Grace Kelly publicity photograph from 1952. This production still is conservation framed in an Obeche wood frame with acid free card mounts and UV plexiglass. There is a pe...Category
Vintage 1950s American Posters
MaterialsPaper
$702 - Rita Hayworth Portrait PhotoLocated in London, GBOriginal Rita Hayworth portrait photo. This is a silver gelatin, double weight satin photograph from 1940s. This piece would be shipped flat in strong card.Category
Vintage 1940s American Posters
MaterialsPaper
- The Woman in the WindowLocated in London, GBOriginal Us Original production still for the 1944 Film Noir The Woman In The Window directed by Fritz Lang and starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett. Th...Category
Vintage 1940s American Photography
MaterialsPaper
- BedazzledLocated in London, GBOriginal photographic production photo from the comedy film Bedazzled 1967 starring Raquel Welch, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore, and directed by Stanley Do...Category
Vintage 1960s American Posters
MaterialsPaper
$255 - "The Producers" PhotographLocated in London, GBOriginal black and white studio photographic production still from The Producers 1967 directed by Mel Brooks and starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. This...Category
Vintage 1960s American Posters
- "North By Northwest" PhotographLocated in London, GBOriginal American black and white studio photographic production still for Alfred Hitchcock's Classic thriller starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, Ja...Category
Vintage 1950s American Posters
- Poster Gianni Versace Metropolitan Museum of Art Photo by Irving Penn, 1997By Gianni Versace, Irving PennLocated in Milano, ITGIANNI Versace. Beautiful and rare Poster of the Metropolitan Museum of Art December 1997-March 1998 of the exhibition on Gianni Versace. The poster depicts a photograph by Irving Penn. Penn's photograph depicts the famous 1987 theatre costume in black quilted satin and white satin with black and white applications. from the TEATRO collection. Approximate size 89 x 63.5 cm. pay. Thank you for your cooperation! The poster is an interesting black and white look on one of Versace's most extravagant evening dresses. This item would be the perfect addition to any Gianni Versace or MMA collection. Versace's catwalk collections...Category
1990s American Post-Modern Posters
MaterialsPaper
- Vogue Magazine March 1963 Framed CoverBy Irving PennLocated in Stamford, CTVogue March 1963 framed original cover. Featuring cover model Burke Amey and a Cartwheel Hat by Halston by Irving Penn. newly framed in blue glossy wood frame.Category
Vintage 1960s American Mid-Century Modern Posters
MaterialsGlass, Wood, Paper
- School Wall Chart Reykjavik (IS) City and PortLocated in Wolfurt, ATReykjavik (IS) City and Port Photo: H. Schlenker, Schweningen - Druck: Herder Druck Freiburg im Breisgau Europa ET SCHOLA EDITIO. Alphen aan den Rijin. Barcelona, Basel, Berlin...Category
Vintage 1960s Mid-Century Modern Photography
MaterialsPaper
- School Wall Chart, City StockholmLocated in Wolfurt, ATInnenstadt Stoccolma (I) - STOCKHOLM - Estocolmo (E) Photo: Viking-Film, Stockholm - Druck: Herder Druck Freiburg im Breisgau EUROPA Et Schola. Editio. Alphen aan den Rijin. B...Category
Vintage 1960s German Mid-Century Modern Photography
MaterialsPaper
- School Wall Chart, Valletta, Fortress and HarbourLocated in Wolfurt, ATThis poster with a photo of the city Valletta (Malta) was produced by Europa et Schola Edition and used in schools for cultural education. Foto: Government Tourist Board, Malta; H...Category
Vintage 1960s Austrian Mid-Century Modern Posters
MaterialsPaper
- School Wall Charts, Fish Market of HelsinkiLocated in Wolfurt, ATHelsinki - Helsingfors Fish market Photo: Pietinen, Helsinki - Druck: Herder Druck Freiburg im Breisgau Europa ET SCHOLA SDITIO Alphen aan den Rijin barcelona, Basel, Berlin,...Category
Vintage 1960s Austrian Mid-Century Modern Posters
MaterialsPaper