FRANCIS BRUGUIÈRE | STILL LIFE

Private collection, New York  

Sotheby's New York, 7 May 1985, Sale 5318, Lot 86

James Enyeart, Bruguière: His Photographs and His Life (New York, 1977), pl. 74 

While living abroad in London in the early 1930s, American photographer Francis Bruguière met and collaborated with Edward McKnight Kauffer, a prolific advertising artist whose avant-garde designs were laced with Cubist and Vortacist references. Bruguière’s photographs from this period – dynamic experiments with multiple-exposure printing, solarization, and juxtaposition of real and representational objects – reveal Kauffer’s direct influence.

Extant prints by Bruguière from this period are rare and the present solarized, multiple-exposure example is among his most successful. At the time of this writing, no other print of this image has appeared at auction. A variant, partially-solarized single-exposure is in the collection of the George Eastman Museum.