Arnold Newman
Pablo Picasso, Vallauris
1954
Vintage gelatin silver print. 24.7 x 19.6 cm. Flush-mounted to original card, signed and handwritten copyright notice in pencil on the mount below the image lower right, personal dedication to Lee Witkin lower left. Photographer's address and copyright stamps as well as annotated in an unknown hand in pencil on the reverse of the mount. - Matted and framed.
While Arnold Newman is actually regarded as a specialist in 'environmental portraits', which show the sitter in his working environment with their corresponding attributes - the pianist Igor Strawinsky at his piano, the photographer Berenice Abbott in her studio with a camera, or the painter Piet Mondrian standing at his easel - in this portrait of Pablo Picasso he chooses an extremely narrow detail of the picture and photographs the artist close up against a neutral background. Due to the short distance and the concentration on the face alone, Newman succeeds in increasing Picasso's presence enormously - which is in fact extraordinarily strong anyway. If one steps in front of this portrait, one can hardly escape its hauntingly concentrated gaze, one cannot resist the feeling that it is he who directs his gaze at us, and not vice versa. 'When I photographed Picasso for the first time, I spent hours with him developing various concepts. Originally, the large head was surrounded by space (I like working with space - we all live in it) but when I looked at the proofs, I realised that the intensity of his eyes and the effect of his hand resting against his head - an unaffected gesture - would be greatly improved without the surrounding space. Picasso might be the only person to whom I would really ascribe a „penetrating look“.' (as cited by Arnold Newman, Ein Leben für die Fotografie, in: Philip Brookman, loc.cit., p. 26). It is precisely in the focus on the head and the raised hand of the artist, pushing the forehead into slight wrinkles, that accentuates theaspects that we particularly associate with the artist's work and person: his analytic eye as well as his hands which are able to translate what he sees into painting and sculpture.
Arnold Newman once made a gift of the rare vintage print of one of his most known portraits up for auction here to the New York gallerist Lee Witkin.
Certificate
With written confirmation by Howard Greenberg, dated October 9, 2019
Provenance
From Arnold Newman to Lee Witkin; private collection, Germany
Literature
Robert A. Sobieszek, Arnold Newman. One Mind's Eye, Boston 1974, ill. p. 11 (tvariant); Henry Geldzahler, Arnold Newman. Artists. Portraits from four decades, Boston 1980, plate 49; Reinhold Mißelbeck (ed.), Arnold Newman. Selected photographs, Cologne 1998, ill. p. 29; Philip Brookman, Arnold Newman, Cologne i.a. 2000, ill. p. 91; Kerstin Stremmel (ed.), Ichundichundich. Picasso im Fotoporträt, exhib.cat. Museum Ludwig, Köln i.a., Ostfildern 2011, ill. p. 32