Irving Penn Still Life with Mouse, New York1947
1947
About the Item
- Creator:Irving Penn (1917 - 2009, American)
- Creation Year:1947
- Dimensions:Height: 10 in (25.4 cm)Width: 8 in (20.32 cm)
- Medium:
- Period:
- Condition:Indentations all quadrants; vertical scratch/lines upper left and lower left quadrant; print does not lie flat; all edges chipped; very faint raised creases upper right quadrant and center.
- Gallery Location:Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: G120927115352
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.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 3 days of delivery.
- Wilde KlematisBy W. JentzschLocated in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CAArtist stamp, monogrammed 'W.J.', titled in pencil and numbered in red crayon on mount verso.Category
20th Century Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Storks Bill, StorchschnabelBy W. JentzschLocated in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CAArtist stamp, monogrammed 'W.J.', titled in pencil and numbered in red crayon on back of mount.Category
20th Century Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Untitled 2001By Jerry UelsmannLocated in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CASigned on the front. Contact gallery for prices and available sizes.Materials
Silver Gelatin
- Eye Chair 1969By Jerry UelsmannLocated in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CASigned on the front. Contact gallery for prices and available sizes.Category
20th Century Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Pepper 30PBy Edward WestonLocated in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CADirector, Glenn Lowry: This image of a pepper is one of Weston’s most iconic photographs. Assistant Curator, Esther Adler: Peppers often curve in on themselves and can kind of twist ...Category
1930s Still-life Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Pepper 30PBy Edward WestonLocated in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CADirector, Glenn Lowry: This image of a pepper is one of Weston’s most iconic photographs. Assistant Curator, Esther Adler: Peppers often curve in on themselves and can kind of twist ...Category
1930s Still-life Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Palm Springs Poolside, California - American Black and White Square PhotographyBy Richard HeepsLocated in Cambridge, GBPalm Springs Pool Side, photography from Richard Heeps Dream in Colour series, taken at the Ballantines Movie Colony. This artwork captures the ...Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Black and White Photography
MaterialsBlack and White, Photographic Paper, C Print, Silver Gelatin
- Desert 13.4 Ed. 4/25By Thomas BrummettLocated in Denver, COThomas Brummett has been working as an artist and professional photographer since 1983 when he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. His work has be...Category
2010s Contemporary Still-life Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Interior Rahway, NJBy George TiceLocated in Westwood, NJ“It takes the passage of time before an image of a commonplace subject can be assessed. The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.” --George Tice GEORGE TICE was born in 1938 in Newark, NJ, the state in which his ancestors had lived for generations earlier. He joined a camera club when he was fourteen, and is largely a self taught photographer. Two years later, when his picture of an alleyway was commended by a pro photographer critiquing club members' work, Tice was off and running with what would become his life’s work.. Tice studied commercial photography for a short time at Newark Vocational and Technical High School then decided to join the Navy. After, he worked as a traveling portrait photographer for almost 10 years. In 1959, Edward Steichen, then director of photography at MOMA acquired Tice's photo of an explosion aboard the USS Wasp for the museum. Later he aided Lee Witkin in establishing the seminal Witkin Gallery in NYC. His work was included in the opening group show in 1969 and the first of many solo shows there began the following April. George’s change to larger format cameras in the 60’s furthered his ability to craft carefully toned and detailed prints. He portrayed traditional Amish and Shaker communities, as well as the hard lives of fishermen in Maine. In the 1970s, Tice began explore his native NJ and began to document the vestiges of American culture on the verge of extinction, the work he is best known for. Whether it is the rural people who reside in small communities or suburban buildings and neighborhoods in decline, his great talent is finding deep meaning and emotional content in the most mundane subjects. In 1972, Tice was the subject of a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, George Tice’s work is included in more than 80 major museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, as well as countless private collections. Some of his iconic New Jersey images form the scenic backdrop...Category
Late 20th Century Contemporary Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Untitled (Moon in Gong)By Chema MadozLocated in Dallas, TXEdition 2/7 Signed on print margin. Printed 2011 Frame included. Chema Madoz is one of the most important contemporary Spanish photographers, who is greatly known for his monochroma...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Surrealist Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Vintage Silver Gelatin Photograph Surrealist Doll Art Photo, Jazz PhotographerLocated in Surfside, FLThese were from a show of her work. Influenced by Surrealism and Dada Photographs these are images of old children's dolls in various states of decay. These bear the influence of Hans Bellmer, Dora Maar and Man Ray. Jo Ann Krivin born in Reasnor, Iowa in 1933, daughter to Earl Guthrie and Lillie Cramer. She graduated from Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, with a bachelor of music degree in voice. She became a copywriter for the CBS Television affiliate in Des Moines, and then a public relations writer for Columbia Records in New York. She later owned and directed The Cramer Gallery in Glen Rock, N.J. Krivin photographed many jazz musicians during the 1980s and 1990s, and published two books of her jazz photos, "25 Years of the Jazz Room at William Paterson University" and "Jazz Studies." Her jazz and doll portraits have been exhibited in group and solo shows, museums, university galleries, and jazz festivals. She was married for over 50 years to painter, musician, and educator Martin Krivin. One of the few women in the field of jazz photography, JoAnn Krivin documented the professional jazz scene from the late 1970's until the late 1990's photographing close to 700 musicians. Her works have been exhibited frequently in solo shows at festivals, museums and galleries across the country. She has served as a still photographer for New Jersey Public Television and has contributed to a variety of national jazz publications. Her book, Twenty Five Years of the Jazz Room at William Paterson University, was published in 2003. Woman artist with a feminist tinge to these photographs. Her work was exhibited at the Ben Shahn Galleries. The exhibit featured photographs of some of the jazz world’s most well-known musicians, including Sonny Rollins, Joe Williams, Art Farmer, Benny Golson, Milt Hinton...Category
20th Century Surrealist Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Vintage Silver Gelatin Photograph Surrealist Doll Art Photo, Jazz PhotographerLocated in Surfside, FLThese were from a show of her work. Influenced by Surrealism and Dada Photographs these are images of old children's dolls in various states of decay. These bear the influence of Hans Bellmer, Dora Maar and Man Ray. Jo Ann Krivin born in Reasnor, Iowa in 1933, daughter to Earl Guthrie and Lillie Cramer. She graduated from Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, with a bachelor of music degree in voice. She became a copywriter for the CBS Television affiliate in Des Moines, and then a public relations writer for Columbia Records in New York. She later owned and directed The Cramer Gallery in Glen Rock, N.J. Krivin photographed many jazz musicians during the 1980s and 1990s, and published two books of her jazz photos, "25 Years of the Jazz Room at William Paterson University" and "Jazz Studies." Her jazz and doll portraits have been exhibited in group and solo shows, museums, university galleries, and jazz festivals. She was married for over 50 years to painter, musician, and educator Martin Krivin. One of the few women in the field of jazz photography, JoAnn Krivin documented the professional jazz scene from the late 1970's until the late 1990's photographing close to 700 musicians. Her works have been exhibited frequently in solo shows at festivals, museums and galleries across the country. She has served as a still photographer for New Jersey Public Television and has contributed to a variety of national jazz publications. Her book, Twenty Five Years of the Jazz Room at William Paterson University, was published in 2003. Woman artist with a feminist tinge to these photographs. Her work was exhibited at the Ben Shahn Galleries. The exhibit featured photographs of some of the jazz world’s most well-known musicians, including Sonny Rollins, Joe Williams, Art Farmer, Benny Golson, Milt Hinton...Category
20th Century Surrealist Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin