Wikipedia entry
Introduction
Frederick Sommer (September 7, 1905 – January 23, 1999), was an artist born in Angri, Italy and raised in Brazil. He earned a M.A. degree in Landscape Architecture (1927) from Cornell University where he met Frances Elisabeth Watson (1904–1999) whom he married in 1928; they had no children. The Sommers moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1931 and then Prescott, Arizona in 1935. Sommer became a naturalized citizen of the United States on November 18, 1939. Considered a master photographer, Sommer first experimented with photography in 1931 after being diagnosed with tuberculosis the year prior. Early works on paper (starting in 1931) include watercolors, and evolve to pen-and-ink or brush plus drawings of visually composed musical score. Concurrent to the works on paper, Sommer started to seriously explore the artistic possibilities of photography in 1938 when he acquired an 8×10 Century Universal Camera, eventually encompassing the genres of still life (chicken parts and assemblage), horizonless landscapes, jarred subjects, cut-paper, cliché-verre negatives and nudes. According to art critic Robert C. Morgan, Sommer's "most extravagant, subtle, majestic, and impressive photographs—comparable in many ways to the views of Yosemite Valley’s El Capitan and Half Dome by Ansel Adams—were Sommer’s seemingly infinite desert landscapes, some of which he referred to as 'constellations.'" The last artistic body of work Sommer produced (1989–1999) was collage based largely on anatomical illustrations. Frederick Sommer had significant artistic relationships with Edward Weston, Max Ernst, Aaron Siskind, Richard Nickel, Minor White, and others. His archive (of negatives and correspondence) was part of founding the Center for Creative Photography in 1975 along with Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Wynn Bullock, and Aaron Siskind. He taught briefly at Prescott College during the late 60s and substituted for Harry Callahan at IIT Institute of Design in 1957–1958 and later at the Rhode Island School of Design. Bruce Silverstein Gallery is the New York representative of the Frederick & Frances Sommer Foundation.
Wikidata
Q5498754
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Getty record
Nationalities
American, Italian
Gender
Male
Roles
Artist, Architect, Painter, Photographer, Sculptor, Theorist
Names
Frederick Sommer, Fritz Sommer
Ulan
500014027
Information from Getty’s Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License

Works

47 works online

Exhibitions

Publications

  • Photography at MoMA: 1920 to 1960 Hardcover, 416 pages
  • The Shape of Things: Photographs from Robert B. Menschel Exhibition catalogue, Hardcover, 152 pages
  • Abstract Expressionism at The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition catalogue, Hardcover, 128 pages
  • Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West Exhibition catalogue, Hardcover, 168 pages
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