This season’s 20th Century Art sale presented by Artnet Auctions sees an incredibly diverse selection highlighting everything from Cubism to Minimalism, Abstraction to Pop art, and features such historically influential artists as Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, and Louise Nevelson—to name a few. Live for bidding now through September 19, the sale also includes a fascinating array of important photographs by some of the 20th-century’s most well-known photographers. Some even feature artists themselves, such as the image by Burt Glinn, Andy Warhol with Edie Sedgwick and Chuck Wein, New York City (1965), which captures the zeitgeist of the 1960s.
Below, we look at some of the sale’s most intriguing photographs.
Paul Strand, Wall Street (1915)
Paul Strand, Wall Street (1915). Est. $9,000–$12,000.
Paul Strand (1890–1976) is cited as one of the leading American photographers who helped solidify photography’s standing as an art form in the 20th century. A student of seminal documentary photographer Lewis Hine and promoted by pioneering Modernist Alfred Stieglitz via the latter’s influential 291 gallery, Strand made his early work in the Pictorialist tradition, but soon began to focus his lens on large city buildings, machinery, and city-dwellers. Strand’s practice is distinguished by its abstraction of architecture and shadow, resulting in atmospheric compositions that provide a new perspective on everyday urban life.
Edward Weston, Shell (1927). Est. $6,000–$8,000.
Considered a master of the medium, Edward Weston (1886–1958) championed technically meticulous and detailed images. His expansive oeuvre included everything from portraits and nudes to landscapes and still lifes. Weston’s approach to compositions helped redefine what was considered artistically possible through photography, as it frequently bestowed an enigmatic air to otherwise recognizable subjects. Shell (1927), one of Weston’s most celebrated images, highlights this proclivity, as the nautilus shell is made unfamiliar and seemingly opulent through close focus and framing.
Richard Avedon, Suzy Parker and Robin Tattersall at Folies-Bergere, Paris (1957)
Richard Avedon, Suzy Parker and Robin Tattersall at Folies-Bergere, Paris (1957). Est. $12,000–$18,000.
Fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) experienced an illustrious career wherein he captured some of the 20th century’s most iconic fashion photographs, such as Dovima with Elephants (1955), as well as celebrity portraits like that of Tina Turner and Jacqueline de Ribes. Avedon often captured his subjects with emotive expressions, an avant-garde preference during the early years of his career that lends his work a sense of dynamism and movement. Ultimately, Avedon’s 40-year career and massive oeuvre illustrated and helped define post-war American culture and aesthetics.
Robert Mapplethorpe, Lynn Davis’s Model (1979)
Robert Mapplethorpe, Lynn Davis’s Model (1979). Est. $3,000–$5,000.
Widely recognized for his intimate, black-and-white portraits as well as documentation of New York subcultures, specifically that of S&M, Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989) approached photography with a classical sensibility. His work is acclaimed for its nuanced use of light and shadow, form and space, regardless of subject matter. In 1988, he was the subject of a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art and again in 2019 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and is considered one of the most well-known contemporary photographers of the last century.
Thomas Struth, Jiangxi Zhong Lu, Shanghai (1996)
Thomas Struth, Jiangxi Zhong Lu, Shanghai (1996). Est. $4,000–$6,000.
German photographer Thomas Struth (b. 1954) first gained critical attention for his “Museum Photographs” series which comprised street photography taken in Düsseldorf and New York during the 1970s. His practice is recognized both for its technical complexity and its diversity of subjects, ranging from urban street scenes to portraits to exotic landscapes. A student of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alongside fellow photographers Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, and Thomas Ruff, Struth was also influenced early on by the work of Gerhard Richter, whom he also studied under. The combination of Becher-style documentation and Richter’s paintings contributed to Struth’s development of a unique style that is a distinctive combination of meticulous and painterly.
20th Century Art is now live for bidding through September 19, 2024.