View full screen - View 1 of Lot 9. Alberto Giacometti, rue d’Alésia, Paris.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Alberto Giacometti, rue d’Alésia, Paris

No reserve

Lot Closed

December 18, 07:10 PM GMT

Estimate

10,000 - 15,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Henri Cartier-Bresson

1908 - 2004


gelatin silver print, signed in ink and blindstamped in the margin, framed, 1961, printed later

image: 14 by 9½ in. (35.7 by 24 cm.)

frame: 23½ by 17⅝ in. (58.4 by 43.2 cm.)

Shapiro Gallery, San Francisco, 2004

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson (London, 1968), pl. 114

Yves Bonnefoy and Robert Delpire, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographe (Paris, 1979), p. 10

Henri Cartier-Bresson and André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photoportraits (Paris, 1985), p. 93

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer (London, 1992), pl. 10

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Vera Feyder, and André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Paris à vue d'oeil (Seuil, 1994), no. 104 

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Vera Feyder, and André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Henri Cartier-Bresson: à propos de Paris (London, 1994), pl. 104

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, The Image and The World (London, 2003), pl. 212

De qui s'agit-il ? Henri Cartier-Bresson (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2003), p. 168

Peter Galassi, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010), p. 54

Clément Chéroux, Henri Cartier-Bresson (London, 2014), pl. 289

With a hunching posture nearly resembling his sculptures, Alberto Giacometti trudges through the rain in Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photograph. Vera Feyder’s essay “Henri Cartier-Bresson: Unshootable Views” equates Cartier-Bresson with the spirit of Paris. She extends that affinity to Giacometti through way of connection to Cartier-Bresson, “(…) he doffs his hat to the street people, and his heart goes out to them–as it does to Giacometti in the rain, to Genet in the café, to the tramp who sleeps tucked under the river embankment, huddled with his dog” (Henri Cartier-Bresson A Propos de Paris, p. 12). The characters Feyder chooses to include in this description, including mentioning Giacometti in this exact photograph, speaks to the importance of the legendary sculptor as part of Cartier-Bresson’s Paris. 


Other prints of Alberto Giacometti, rue d'Alésia, Paris are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, among others.