Josef Breitenbach at the Gitterman Gallery, New York, Sept 18 - Nov 22

Exhibition Description:

Gitterman Gallery is presenting an exhibition of vintage photographs by Josef Breitenbach concurrent with the release of the book Josef Breitenbach: Manifesto (Nazraeli Press, 2008). The exhibition highlights his avant-garde work from the 1930s and 40s. His distinctive use of vibrant color as an expressive tool earns him a place in the history of art of this period.

Breitenbach used complex processes of bleaching, toning and pigment printing to color his photographs. Sharing a similar visual vocabulary with the Surrealists, he employed techniques such as montage, solarization, the photogram and superimpression, to achieve an artistic expression which was consistently conscious and deliberate.

Born in Munich to a wine merchant family in 1896, Breitenbach went on to study art history and became immersed in the rich history of European painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture. He opened his first photography studio in 1932 in Munich.

Breitenbach was a left wing political activist early in his career and forged ties with Munich ’s intelligentsia, photographing many of them. He fled to Paris when Hitler became chancellor in 1933. It was there he came into contact with the Surrealist movement. Even though he did not identify himself as a Surrealist, his photography was exhibited alongside the work of Man Ray, Kertesz, Brassai and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Breitenbach escaped from being interned in September 1939, by leaving for New York City in 1942, via a stay in Barcelona. He taught photography in New York and for reasons unknown, he hid his prewar work, which were only discovered when they surfaced during a routine appraisal of his estate in 1984. Although much of Breitenbach's work commented on and recorded the cultural and political environment of the era, he made regular allusions to the past with a deep reverence for humanity.

Josef Breitenbach's work is resident in many institutional collections including: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art , New York ; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris ; and the Victoria and Albert Museum , London .

Description:

Image: Josef Breitenbach, Annabella, Portrait in Black and Red, c. 1935. Courtesy Gitterman Gallery, New York.

Full Contact Details:

Gitterman Gallery
170 E 75th Street
New York , NY 10021
T: (212) 734-0868
F: (212) 734-0869
info (at) gittermangallery.com
Gallery Hours: Wednesday through Saturday, 11 to 6 pm & by appointment