LOT Phillips de Pury & Company  /  PHOTOGRAPHS PART I  / 

23

EDWARD WESTON (American, 1886-1958) PIRÁMIDE DEL SOL (MEXICO) titled, signed and dated

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:250,000.00 - 350,000.00 USD
EDWARD WESTON (American, 1886-1958) PIRÁMIDE DEL SOL (MEXICO) titled, signed and dated
EDWARD WESTON (American, 1886-1958) PIRÁMIDE DEL SOL (MEXICO) titled, signed and dated "- Pirámide del Sol - Edward Weston, Mexico, 1923" in pencil below image on mount signed and dated "Edward Weston, Mexico, 1923" in pencil on verso of print vintage platinum-palladium print hinged to board 7 9/16 x 9 1/2 in. (19.2 x 24.1 cm) board: 18 x 14 in. (45.7 x 35.6 cm) 1923 PROVENANCE From the artist to Frances Toor (editor, MEXICAN FOLKWAYS), MEXICO Throckmorton Fine Art, NEW YORK Private Collection, SWITZERLAND LITERATURE Anita Brenner, IDOLS BEHIND ALTARS, New York, 1929, fig. 10 (illustrated) Merle Armitage, "The Photography of Edward Weston," TOURING TOPICS, vol. 22, no. 66, June 1930, n.p. (illustrated) Nancy Newhall, THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF EDWARD WESTON, New York, 1946, p. 12 (illustrated) Edward Weston, DAYBOOKS, VOLUME I: MEXICO, New York, 1961, pl. 10 (illustrated) Ben Maddow, EDWARD WESTON: HIS LIFE AND PHOTOGRAPHS, Millerton, New York, 1979, p. 113 (illustrated) Amy Conger, EDWARD WESTON IN MEXICO, Albuquerque, 1983, fig. 18 (illustrated) Van Deren Coke with Diana C. Du Pont, PHOTOGRAPHY: A FACET OF MODERNISM, San Francisco, 1986, p. 35, pl. 4 (illustrated) Amy Conger, EDWARD WESTON: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY, Tucson, 1992, fig. 108/1923 (illustrated) EDWARD WESTON: LA MIRADA DE LA RUPTURA, Mexico City, 1994, p. 40, fig. 7 (illustrated) Gilles Mora, ed., EDWARD WESTON: FORMS OF PASSION, New York, 1995, p. 78 (illustrated) Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., EDWARD WESTON: PHOTOGRAPHY AND MODERNISM, Boston, 1999, p. 32, fig. 5 (illustrated) Olivier Debroise, MEXICAN SUITE: A HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN MEXICO, Austin, 2001, p. 98 (illustrated) By the 1920s, Edward Weston was a highly respected pictorial photographer, but had grown disenchanted with this popular style. Seeking to invigorate his work through exposure to new surroundings, Weston departed for Mexico in July 1923, reluctantly leaving his children behind in Los Angeles. By September he was ensconced in a hacienda in Tacubaya, a suburb east of Mexico City. As the present work demonstrates, this dramatic change of scenery had an immediate impact on the artist's work, which quickly announced the bold modernity of Weston's mature style. Weston's DAYBOOKS suggest that he was creating these striking new images as soon as November, when he visited the pyramids at Teotihuacan. "Thursday last [November 22, 1923] to San Juan Teotihuacan and the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon with Rafael and Monna, Felipe, Llewellyn, Tina, Chandler and Edward, also three cameras, good food, and plenty of wine.... We shall go again, for night came on too soon. Next time the stay must be for several days; it is far too much to absorb in a few hours" (Edward Weston, DAYBOOKS, VOLUME 1: MEXICO, Rochester: George Eastman House, 1961, p. 33). Despite Weston's complaints about the waning sunlight, the present work demonstrates his remarkable command of light and shadow. The artist approached the pyramid from an unusual angle, allowing one side of the monument to engulf most of the image. But Weston balanced this imposing sunlit façade with a bolt of sheer blackness. This smaller section of shadow is captured in ascending registers that dramatically assert the height of the pyramid, even within the confines of a relatively small print. Nearly a year later, in October 1924, Weston mounted a show of his work at the Aztec Land Gallery in Mexico City. Approximately eighty of his prints were exhibited, all devoted to subjects he had photographed in Mexico. While only six of the works found buyers, a print of PIRáMIDE DEL SOL was among the few that sold, and the entire show was greeted with enthusiastic praise. As Weston later reflected, "I have had applause, real homage. I am pleased, not just satisfied, with my prints as they display themselves to me on the wall. No question but that I have gone ahead.... The glory has been sweet, and I shall ever be grateful to the Mexicans for their fine attitude and appreciation" (Cited in Amy Conger, EDWARD WESTON IN MEXICO: 1923-1926, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1983, p. 31). Weston was clearly not exaggerating, for the Mexican writer Francisco Monterde Garcia Icazbalceta soon published a glowing review of the exhibition. Composed in the form of a prose poem, the review specifically mentioned the profound impact of the present work. "The pupil of Weston's eye, circumscribed and clarified by his lens, is like a gunsight, and we have been presented with its conquests.... Weston's close-up views of the pyramids, alone, make one feel the weight of the centuries that lies heavily on Teotihuacan" (Cited in Conger, ibid., p. 32). In the platinum print format, the present example is believed to be unique.
Sign In to Bookmark Lot