Collection Online as of September 27, 2023
c. 1928
Gelatin silver print from a photogram negative
Image: 29.4 x 23.5 cm (11 9/16 x 9 1/4 in.); Paper: 29.5 x 25.6 cm (11 5/8 x 10 1/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 2007.147
© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Description A figure peers through a magnifying glass at a negative of an image of Paris taken by Lissitzky in 1928. The artist’s interest in the photogram and negative images may relate to his experience of being x-rayed for tuberculosis in 1924. Later that decade, Lissitzky experimented extensively with positive and negative versions of photograms. A photogram provides a negative image of the objects placed on the sensitized paper. Using the photogram as a negative creates a positive print. Printing a mix of positive and negative images on the same sheet of paper allowed Lissitzky to add a sense of three dimensionality to the silhouettes.
Inscriptions
Inscription written in pencil on verso: "166 (in a circle)/ artist's printing notes"
Inscription Notations on verso of print, initaled by Sophie Lissitsky-Küppers
Provenance The artist's family, Moscow
early 1990s
(Houk Friedman, New York, NY)
Private Collection, New York, NY
Bernd Künne, Hanover, Germany
October 14, 2004
(Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, NY, Oct. 14, 2004, no. 131)
2004-2007
David Raymond [b.1979], New York, NY
2007-
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Citations
Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E. Hinson, Ian Walker, and Lisa Kurzner. Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography : the David Raymond Collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. 2014. Reproduced: p. 88; mentioned p. 89; reproduced and mentioned: p. 220.
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932 : Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, State Tretʹiakov Gallery, State Russian Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. New York, N.Y.: Guggenheim Museum, 1992. Reproduced: p. 434, no. 472; mentioned: pp. 771.
Lissitzky, El, and Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers. El Lissitzky; Life, Letters, Texts. Greenwich, Conn: New York Graphic Society, 1968. Reproduced: p. 263, no. 166; mentioned: pp. 401.
Lissitzky, El, and Margarita Tupitsyn. El Lissitzky: Experiments in Photography : [Exhibition] April 17 to June 1, 1991. New York, N.Y.: Houk Friedman, 1991. Mentioned: p. 12; reproduced: p. 13.
Hinson, Tom E., "Photo Surrealism", Cleveland Museum of Art.
Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine . Vol. 48 no. 3, March 2008 8Mentioned & reproduced: p. 8
archive.org
Exhibition history
El Lissitsky: Experiments in Photography . Houk Friedman (April 17-June 6, 1991).
The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde . Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany (March 1-May 10, 1992); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (June 5-August 23, 1992); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (September 25, 1992-January 3, 1993).
Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography . The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 19, 2014-January 11, 2015).
