Early 20th Century

EARLY TO MID 20TH CENTURY MASTERS

Ansel Adams: Early Works
Intimate master prints from the 1920s through the 1950s depict Adams’ transition from pictorialism to straight photography, and provide a fresh look at this legendary master of the American landscape. One of art2art’s most popular shows -- featuring the earliest known prints of Moonrise, Hernandez, NM, 1941 and Clearing Winter Storm, 1938.

©Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange’s America
a focused exhibition of original lifetime prints by the legendary documentary photographer Dorothea Lange. Highlighting this show are oversized exhibition prints of her seminal portraits from the Great Depression, including White Angel Breadline, Migratory Farm Worker, and, most famously, Migrant Mother – an emblematic picture that came to personify pride and resilience in the face of abject poverty in 1930s America.

©Man Ray Trust

French Twist: Masterworks of photography from Atget to Man Ray
Vintage photographs from the golden age of French photography, 1900-1940. Et quel variété!From the lyrical architectural views of Atget to the Surrealist inventions of Man Ray and Dora Maar, from the boyish wonder of Lartigue to the crepuscular moodiness of Brassaï, from the elegant still lifes of Kertész to the sophisticated street theater of Cartier-Bresson and Ilse Bing, all major facets of French photography are surveyed and celebrated.

Guillermo Kahlo

Frida Kahlo - An Intimate Portrait: The Photographic Albums
Frida Kahlo - An Intimate Portrait: The Photographic Albums features a selection of 113 intimate photographs from Frida Kahlo’s private albums. Although Frida Kahlo has been widely investigated as an artist, her personal items, such as these photographic albums of intimate, private, and personal images have rarely been seen. These captivating photos offer a unique perspective into this beloved artist and icon, her persona is more palpable through these images than through the paintings alone, which were highly influenced by her existence and conditions.

Season’s Greetings: Holiday Cards from the Monroe Wheeler Archive
As Director of Exhibitions and Publications at the Museum of Modern Art from 1939 to 1967, Monroe Wheeler heavily influenced typography, book design, and the development of the museum exhibition catalog. During his tenure at MoMA, Wheeler developed close relationships with many of the artists whose works he exhibited and published. Season’s Greetings features handmade art objects and limited printings that were sent to Wheeler from artists, many of whom he knew intimately, including never-before-seen work by such luminaries as Jean Cocteau, Ben Shahn, Miguel Covarrubias, Rufino Tamayo, Roberto Montenegro, and Herbert Bayer.

Photo-Secession: Painterly Masterworks of Turn-of-the-Century Photography
This gorgeous exhibit celebrates an intrepid group of photographers on both sides of the Atlantic at the turn of the 20th century who fought to establish photography as a fully-fledged fine art, coequal with painting, sculpture, and etching. While they had their individual approaches to picture-making, these all involved the marriage of traditional painting subject matter – landscape, allegorical study, nude, still life – to a suitably hand-crafted photographic print.

Lewis Hine

“Our Strength Is Our People”:The humanist photographs of Lewis Hine
This moving and timely exhibition of rare vintage prints surveys Lewis Hine’s life’s work documenting the travails and triumphs of immigration and labor. It culminates in his magnificent oversized photographs of the construction of the Empire State Building in 1931.

Under the Mexican Sky:
vintage photographs by Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, and colleagues
This exhibition features rare vintage Mexican masterworks by both Weston and Modotti from the 1920s, as well as stellar photographs from the 1930s by the Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson and by Mexico’s own Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Weston's Women
Throughout his storied 3-decade career, Edward Weston surrounded himself with brilliant, accomplished women. His role was, variously, that of mentor, business partner, colleague, lover, friend, and, of course, photographer. This path-breaking exhibition celebrates these women – on both sides of the lens – with sumptuous and rare vintage prints.

Fred Stein

Fred stein - Out of Exile: A Refugee's Response to Fascism
This newly rediscovered body of work by Fred Stein provides a view of life on the edge: an artist creating inspiration in the face of oppression. Photographed after Stein fled Nazi Germany in 1933, these are mesmerizing scenes of life in Paris and New York, recorded with sophistication, wit and depth of feeling. He brought a Modernist eye, imbued with Socialist ideals, to his photographs of everyday life.

Bill Brandt: Shadows and Substance
Bill Brandt (1904-83) is widely considered England‘s greatest 20th century photographer. After spending his formative years in Paris in the orbit of Man Ray, Brandt returned to London and developed a sophisticated form of photo-reportage. This exhibition features important vintage prints from all facets of Brandt’s varied career including his iconic "Nude #36 (with Bent Elbow)" as well as six unique oversized exhibition prints from Brandt's seminal 1969 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

Edward Weston: Life Work
Newly updated, this ground-breaking show contains an outstanding grouping og vintage prints from all phases of Weston's five-decade career. Previously unpublished masterworks are interspersed with well-known signature images

Disfarmer: The Vintage Prints
Presenting the recently discovered vintage photographs of Mike Disfarmer (1884-1959), one of America’s greatest studio portraitists. Disfarmer is often compared to Walker Evans for his powerfully rendered Depression-era Southern subjects, and to August Sander for his depiction of “people without masks.” In turn, Richard Avedon acknowledged Disfarmer’s influence when he created his series In the American West. An indelible collective portrait of Depression-era small-town America.

The Secret Paris of the 1930’s: Vintage Photographs by Brassaï
Ambitious young artists from around the world flocked to between-the-wars Paris, where they formed a fertile artistic milieu. Among them was the Transylvanian-born Brassaï, whose evocative, inky-black, and very rare, vintage photographs of night-time Paris from a private collection are assembled into this unforgettable exhibition.