FLORENCE HENRI (1893-1982)

Details
FLORENCE HENRI (1893-1982)

Still Life Composition

Gelatin silver print. 1932. Handwritten credit in pencil and Collection Romeo Martinez stamp on the reverse of the flush-mount. 9 x 10¾in. Framed.
Provenance
The Collection of Romeo Martinez, Paris;
Sotheby's, May 10, 1983, lot 89.
Literature
Camera, September, 1967; Florence Henri: Artist - Photographer of the Avant-Garde, pl. 45 (cat. no. 68).
Exhibited
Florence Henri: Artist - Photographer of the Avant-Garde, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, December 13, 1990 - February 10, 1991, and three other venues.

Lot Essay

Romeo Martinez was editor of the magazine Camera from 1952 to 1973. When he published several of Florence Henri's pictures in 1967 she had drifted into virtual obscurity. As the interest in photography grew in the 1970s her work was rediscovered and she began to go back to her negatives for the first time in decades. Diana Dupont's 1990 catalogue and the exhibition it accompanied firmly reestablished Henri's reputation as a leading figure of the avant-garde. Her training as a painter and then a photographer at the Bauhaus led to the development of a body of work of photomontage, combination prints, mirror images and striking portraiture.