Manuel Alvarez Bravo (1902-2002) Photograph Signed Piece is 5 1/2" x 3 1/2"Manuel Álvarez Bravo (February 4, 1902 – October 19, 2002) was a Mexican artistic photographer and one of the most important figures in 20th century Latin American photography. He was born and raised in Mexico City. While he took art classes at the Academy of San Carlos, his photography is self-taught. His career spanned from the late 1920s to the 1990s with its artistic peak between the 1920s and 1950s. His hallmark as a photographer was to capture images of the ordinary but in ironic or Surrealistic ways. His early work was based on European influences, but he was soon influenced by the Mexican muralism movement and the general cultural and political push at the time to redefine Mexican identity. He rejected the picturesque, employing elements to avoid stereotyping. He had numerous exhibitions of his work, worked in the Mexican cinema and established Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana publishing house. He won numerous awards for his work, mostly after 1970. His work was recognized by the UNESCO Memory of the World registry in 2017.From 1908 to 1914 Alvarez Bravo attended elementary at the Patricio Saénz boarding school in Tlalpan, but he had to leave school at the age of twelve when his father died. He worked as a clerk at a French textile factory for some time, and later at the Mexican Treasury Department. He studied accounting at night for a while but then switched to classes in art at the Academy of San Carlos.[2][3] Alvarez Bravo met Hugo Brehme in 1923 and bought his first camera in 1924.[5][6] He began experimenting with it, with some advice from Brehme and subscriptions to photography magazines.[2][3] In 1927, he met photographer Tina Modotti. Álvarez Bravo had admired Modotti's work in magazines such as Forma and Mexican Folkways even before they met. She introduced him to a number of intellectuals and artists in Mexico City, including photographer Edward Weston, who encouraged him to continue with the craft.Alvarez Bravo's early work was influenced by European Cubism, French Surrealism and abstract art. Much of this came from two books, one of Picasso and another on Japanese prints with work by Hokusai that influenced his early landscape work.However, his career was being established during the post Mexican Revolution era, when there was a cultural and political push to redefine Mexican identity. In the 1930s, he abandoned European influences for more Mexican themes and styles, influenced by the art of the Mexican muralism movement.[19] His photographs became more complicated with ancient symbols of blood, death and religion along with the paradoxes and ambiguities of Mexican culture. His experience with death as a child as the Mexican Revolution was unfolding played a role in his photographs from the explicit “Striking Worker, Assassinated” to the more subtle “Portrait of the Eternal.” However, while Alvarez Bravo was interested in Mexico's cultural identity, he was not particularly political.Alvarez Bravo's trademark was the ability to capture hidden and surreal essences beneath the apparently ordinary images he was photographing.[10] Alvarez Bravo was the first Mexican photographer to take a militantly anti-picturesque stand, to avoid stereotyping Mexico's variety of cultures. To avoid the picturesque, he had to present images that went against what was expected from photographs about Mexico even if photographing something classically Mexican. One way Alvarez Bravo did this was to employ a sense of irony, to the addition of an element contrary to expectations and the main focus of the photograph. For example, while photographing an indigenous man in typical clothing (Señor de Papantla 1934), the man stares defiantly back into the camera.[14] Another was to capture people doing ordinary activities avoiding romanticism and sentimentality. One example is a photo of a mother and a shoeshine boy (La mama del bolero y el bolero 1950s) eating lunch together. Another is a group of men eating at a lunch counter (Los agachadfos 1934).Alvarez Bravo used Mexico City's streets and squares to frame statements about the social and cultural realities of the city.[20] He used his lens to present Mexico City not in terms of moral or heroic, but rather of social relationships and material clashes. These included class and gender roles.[ During the 1930s and 1940s, he discovered increasingly more complex ways to frame the contradictions of Mexico's urban life into social statements. In his pictures, feminine identity has a complex symbolic range where sex overlaps with other social identities of everyday life. All items Located in in Hollywood Florida Warehouse For Shipping Call today for quote they have item numbers and Pak Mail is available for all your custom packaging and shipping needs. We can package, palletize, crate, insure and ship to any Domestic or International location. All packaging and shipping fees must be paid in full before shipment is released. On international shipments, consignee is responsible for all Duties, Taxes, Customs Clearance or any destination fees that apply. Please visit our website @ www.pakmail.com/us770 for contact information or to get a quote. (Let us know you are a winning bidder from the Puckett auction so we can correctly arrange pick up for your item