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Lot 54
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MANUEL ÁLVAREZ BRAVO (1902-2002)
Parabola Optica [Optical Parable].
Platinum print, 9
3
/
4
x7
1
/
2
inches (24.8x19.1 cm.), with Bravo’s initials,
in pencil, and notations, in an unknown hand, on verso. 1931; printed 1990s
[6,000/9,000]
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
(Museum of Modern Art, 1997), frontispiece.
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JAROSLAV RÖSSLER (1902-1990)
Billboard.
Silver print, 9
1
/
4
x6
3
/
4
inches (23.5x17.1 cm.), with Rössler’s signature, date, and the notation
Paris, in pencil, on verso. 1928
[8,000/12,000]
From Zbynek Primus, Prague; to a Private Collector.
Jaroslav Rössler was a pioneering Czech avant-garde photographer and a member of the Czech
Association of Avant-Garde Artists known as Devetsil. From 1917 to 1920 Rössler studied with the
renowned photographer Frantiˆsek Drtikol and worked as a lab technician at his studio. At the age
of 21, he began a fruitful collaboration with the designer and art theoretician Karel Teige.
Rossler’s early photographic works were influenced by Cubism and Futurism. In 1927, he and his
wife Gertruda Fischerová moved to Paris, where he worked on commissions for renowned companies
such as Michelin and Shell. In this photographic composition, Rossler positions the billboard as a
massive modernist object in which the numbers signify open-ended graphic representations.
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