THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART MOUNTS MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE OF THE WORK OF MEXICAN MASTER MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO
First Exhibition to Examine His Entire Career;
Rare Vintage Prints Featured, Including 80 Works from the Artist's Personal Collection;
Many Images Not Seen Since They Were First Exhibited in the 1930s
MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO
DATES February 19–May 18, 1997
ORGANIZATION Organized by Susan Kismaric, Curator, Department of
Photography, The Museum of Modern Art
SPONSORSHIP The exhibition is supported in part by a grant from the
Mex-Am Cultural Foundation, Inc.
CONTENT Manuel Alvarez Bravo presents the first
comprehensive look at the career of this leading modern artist and the only
photographer among the great 20th-century Mexican artists.
Born in 1902, Alvarez Bravo's career began in the thriving artistic
environment of post-revolutionary Mexico, in the company of artists such as
Diego Rivera, Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. Over the
course of his long and productive career, the artist's vast body of work has
ranged from formal experiments in the 1920s, through modernist works inspired
by such international trends as Surrealism, to the realization of a gifted
personal style in the early 1930s that suggests specific Mexican customs and
rituals.
The exhibition will include some 175 photographs from all phases of the
artist's career. The chronological organization of the exhibition will
emphasize the recurrence of certain elements in the artist's work—sympathy for
the lower classes, an air of mystery, a sense of the surreal, and a
preoccupation with death.
Ms. Kismaric conducted many interviews with the artist and worked closely
with him and his wife, Colette Alvarez Urbjatel, to select the work for the
exhibition.
PUBLICATION Manuel Alvarez Bravo, by Susan Kismaric. 240
pages; 215 illustrations, including 175 tritone plates. Ms. Kismaric's
extensive interviews with Alvarez Bravo are incorporated into her essay. She
also examines for the first time how Alvarez Bravo's work is connected with
European photography of the 1920s through his contact with magazines and his
friendship with Tina Modotti. Clothbound, $60.00, distributed in the United
States and Canada by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, and paperbound, $27.50;
both available in The MoMA Book Store.
TRAVEL A tour is currently being planned.
For further information, contact Mary Lou Strahlendorff, Department of
Communications, 212/708–9755.
