Arthur Siegel Cement Mixer 1953, Abstract Dye Transfer Print, Signed

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Stunning lifetime signed dye transfer print by Arthur Siegel. Although color photography was available to the public in the late … Read more Stunning lifetime signed dye transfer print by Arthur Siegel. Although color photography was available to the public in the late 1930s, most respected "photographers" were extremely skeptical of its relevance in the "art of photography." (According to William Eggleston, who is often credited as increasing the recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium in the 1960s, his former idol and modern photography legend, Henri Cartier-Bresson, said to him at a party, "William, color is bullshit.") Color was considered a "distraction" to the essential subject and the composition formed by light, line and form. Ansel Adams, another master of modernism (who secretly experimented with color photography throughout his career by the way) famously said that he could get "a far greater sense of color through a well-planned and executed black-and-white image than [can] ever [be] achieved with color photography."

To say Siegel was doing something radical by bringing color into the equation of the modern photographic image is an understatement. Siegel left his post at the Institute of Design where he was the head of photography department and creator of the "New Visions in Photography" course to essentially take on a newer (and much more vibrant) vision of photography in the 20th century. His focus throughout the 1950s was to use color and its variations in tone to express emotional states. The objects in his photographs were often abstracted, so that color acted as his main expressive component. He pushed color photography to creative and symbolic extremes through his evocative explorations of tone, blurring, light and shadow. He exhibited his photographs abroad and in the United States, having two all-color one-man shows at the Art Institute of Chicago and participating in many group shows, among them Edward Steichen’s “Image of America” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Arthur Siegel, 1913-1978
Cement mixer, 1953
Measures: 6½ H × 10 W in. See less