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BRASSA- (GYULA HAL-SZ) (French, b. Transylvania, 1899-1984) VISAGE MIN+RAL signed "Brassan 1935" and

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:7,000.00 - 10,000.00 USD
BRASSA- (GYULA HAL-SZ) (French, b. Transylvania, 1899-1984) VISAGE MIN+RAL signed  Brassan 1935  and
BRASSA- (GYULA HAL-SZ) (French, b. Transylvania, 1899-1984) VISAGE MIN+RAL signed "Brassan 1935" and editioned "3/6" in ink on recto titled "Visage MinTral" in ink on verso of mount gelatin silver print (clichT verre) mounted on board 115/8 x 159/16 in. (29.5 x 39.5 cm) mount: 143/8 x 183/16 in. (36.5 x 46.2 cm) negative was made circa 1930 negative etched and retouched in 1934-1935 printed circa 1966-1967 this print is number 3 from an edition of 6 ESTIMATE: $7,000-10,000 PROVENANCE Louis Stettner, NEW YORK & PARIS LITERATURE Brassan, TRANSMUTATIONS, Les Contards, 1967, no. VII (This image is also included in this portfolio that consists of smaller prints (93/8 x 7 in., 23.8 x 17.8 cm), printed in an edition of 100) "Transmutations by Brassan," ALBUM, no. 8, September 1970, pp. 24-28 (illustrated on p. 26) Manuel J. Borja-Villel, BRASSA-, Barcelona, 1993, p. 208, pl. 128 ("Transmutations" version illustrated) Anne Baldassari, BRASSA-/PICASSO: CONVERSATIONS AVEC LA LUMI+RE, Paris, 2000, p. 72, pl. 34 (original contact Gr. 14 illustrated); p. 130, pl. 94 (print of third state illustrated); p. 131, pl. 95 (final state of negative Gr. 14 illustrated) Alain Sayag and Annick Lionel-Marie, eds., BRASSA-: THE MONOGRAPH, Boston, 2000, p. 214 ("Transmutations" version illustrated) Brassan was an artist of multiple talents who combined photography, sculpture and drawing in this work. Previously unaware of the technique of clichT verre practiced by such artists as Delacroix, Millet, and Corot, Brassan made his own innovation by using negatives that already had images on them instead of a plain opaque plate. He began to scrape away the emulsion. Wherever there was clear glass would print as black. As he neared a point of completion, Brassan would make a print, tack it on the wall and study it. Sometimes he would draw or paint on the test print in black ink or white paint to work out how he might rework the plate again. He proceeded, sometimes making as many as seven or eight intermediary prints to resolve the composition before he was pleased with the final result. Another innovation to clichT verre that Brassan made, and visible in this lot, is the addition to the plate of opaque ink leaving a white line in the print. After making these experiments in 1935, he put the plates and the prints aside until the mid-1960s when he made a selection of twelve of them. He printed them on the European standard format paper (30 x 40 cm) in an edition of six, mounted them to board and signed and editioned on the recto of the print itself. Within about a year, he had another smaller format edition printed with specially constructed boxes, mounts and text plates in an edition of 100. Larger format prints rarely come on the market. Finally, Brassan wrote the introduction for the portfolio and discussed his creative process and this picture in particular; "As a sculptor, I have always restricted myself to releasing the form glimpsed for a second in a pebble picked up on the seashore. In the same way, in this instance, I confined myself to revealing the latent figure buried within each image. Photography became my raw material, the point of departure for mutations and transmutations that no longer had any connection with the original. I was almost like a sleepwalker as I experienced these acts of destruction and creation. The dislocated elements of the photographs reorganized themselves into new combinations. I saw a rock crystal transform itself little by little into a mysterious stone face."