Lot 13
Robert Frank
Lot 13 Details
Robert Frank
A MONUMENT TO ELECTRICITY + PHOTOGRAPHY, 1976/1980
lithograph hand-pulled on a Malibander flatbed press one colour at a time, with a range of six to eight colour lightfast inks, framed by museumpros
28.5 x 26.25 in — 72.4 x 66.7 cm
Estimate $4,200-$5,600
Sold For:
$4,550
Buyer’s Premium and Taxes are excluded from Benefit Auctions
Provenance:
Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto
Note:
Robert Frank’s photographs, films, and mixed media works have consistently garnered critical praise while reaching a broad populous of art lovers, academics, and collectors. Born in Zurich in 1924, Frank moved to New York in 1947. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1955 at a time when he was traveling by car across the United States, undertaking a photographic exploration of the nation. The result was a body of work over 20,000 images strong and a book titled simply The Americans (1958). This publication is recognized as a seminal point in the history of photography as a departure from the thematic and aesthetic norms of documentary photography at that time, and in its overwhelming influence on all photography that followed it.
Since 1970, Frank has split his time between New York and Mabou, a small community on Cape Breton Island. This shift to a quieter lifestyle precipitated a period of introspective and extremely personal work that has continued for decades. The big cities and diverse cultural landscape were gone, traded for seclusion amidst a rocky and rugged landscape. With few other places to turn, Frank frequently focused the camera on himself and his family and their lives.