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ALEXANDR RODCHENKO (Russian, 1891-1956) MOTHER signed and titled “A. M. Rodchenko: Mat” by Rodche...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:20,000.00 - 30,000.00 USD
ALEXANDR RODCHENKO (Russian, 1891-1956) MOTHER signed and titled “A. M. Rodchenko: Mat” by Rodche...
ALEXANDR RODCHENKO
(Russian, 1891-1956)
MOTHER
signed and titled “A. M. Rodchenko: Mat” by Rodchenko
dedication “To S. A. Morozov for a memory, Rodchenko, 1956”
in artist’s hand
gelatin silver print
103?16 x 711?16 in. (25.9 x 19.5 cm)
1924
ESTIMATE: $20,000-30,000
PROVENANCE
From the artist to Sergey A. Morozov, MOSCOW
Private Collection, PRAGUE
LITERATURE
Sergey Morozov, SOVETSKAYA KHUDOZHESTVENNAYA FOTOGRAFIA 1917-1957, MOSCOW, Iskusstvo, 1958, p. 35 (illustrated)
Leonid Volkov-Lannit, ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO, MOSCOW, Iskusstvo, 1968, p. 165 (illustrated)
Evelyn Weiss, ALEXANDER RODTSCHENKO: FOTOGRAFIEN 1920-1938, COLOGNE, Wienand Verlag, 1978, p. 115 and front cover (illustrated)
David Elliott, ed., RODCHENKO AND THE ARTS OF REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA, NEW YORK, Pantheon Books, 1979, p. 113 (illustrated)
Grigory Shudakov, PIONEERS OF SOVIET PHOTOGRAPHY, LONDON, Thames and Hudson, 1983, front cover (illustrated)
S.O. Khan-Magomedov, RODCHENKO: THE COMPLETE WORK, LONDON, Thames and Hudson, 1986, p. 228 (illustrated)
ALEXANDRE RODTCHENKO, Collection Photo Poche, PARIS, Centre National de la Photographie, 1986, pl. 6 (illustrated)
Alexander Lavrentiev, ALEXANDER RODCHENKO-FOTOGRAFII, MOSCOW, Planeta, 1987, pp. 26-27 (illustrated and variant cropping with much more of the woman and her surroundings illustrated)
RODCHENKO PHOTOS, BUDAPEST, Ernst Museum, 1988, n.p. (illustrated)
Varvara Rodchenko, Aleksandr Lavrentiev and Chris Carrell ed., THE RODCHENKO FAMILY WORKSHOP, GLASGOW, New Beginnings Ltd. and LONDON, Serpentine Gallery, 1989, p. 59, pl. 1 (illustrated)
DIE REVOLUTION: DIE ANFƒNGE DES BILDJOURNALISMUS IN DER SOWJETUNION, Z¸RICH, Kunsthaus Z¸rich, 1989, p. 59, cat. nos. 91 and 91A (illustrated and variant cropping with a newspaper in front of Rodchenko’s mother illustrated)
Alexander Nikolaevich Lavrentiev, RODCHENKO PHOTOGRAPHY 1924-1954, COLOGNE, Kˆnemann, 1995, p. 63, pl. 59 (illustrated)
Margarita Tupitsyn, THE SOVIET PHOTOGRAPH 1924-1937, NEW HAVEN, Yale University Press, 1996, front cover (illustrated)
Magdalena Dabrowski, Leah Dickerman and Peter Galassi, ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO, NEW YORK, The Museum of Modern Art, 1998, p. 214, cat. no. 146 (illustrated)
Originally a graphic artist, Rodchenko became interested in photography when working with photomontage for design purposes. As he moved into photography, his designer’s eye often tightly filled the frame with stark, dramatic shapes and unusual angles or cropping—a style echoed in his portraits as well. Many of his portraits date from 1924 to1929 when he was shooting cover images for the Left Front of Art (LEF), a journal for forward-thinking artists and writers of the day.
PORTRAIT OF MOTHER is one of the first portraits made by Rodchenko near the start of his photographic career. This image came into being when Rodchenko happened upon his mother (who had just recently become literate in her late fifties) while she was reading. This photograph provides a sense of the importance of this captured moment, both to Rodchenko as a proud son and to his mother as an intensely engaged reader. “It is as if the photograph were taken for eternity” (Lavrentiev, Rodchenko Photography 1924-1954, new haven, Yale University Press, p. 17).
The original negative showed the subject’s upper torso and arms resting on a table with a periodical in front of her. The artist cropped the image for exhibition and not long after, during the 1930s, the glass plate negative was broken.