AARON SISKIND (attributed), Trees in Snow, c. 1950, 9.25x6.75" Gelatin silver print, Printed c. 1950.

Siskind was interested in form in abstraction, experimenting here with bare trees in the snow.

Aaron Siskind was born on New York's Lower East Side in 1903. He spent his young life in search of a medium with which to express and develop his aesthetic. He was interested in social reform, and explored music, literature, and poetry. The gift of a camera in 1930 changed his life forever. His early images were powerful evocations of the human condition, many of them done under the auspices of the New York Photo League. As a member of the Photo League, Siskind organized the League's Feature Group, whose focus was documenting neighborhoods in the city, and Harlem was his primary subject.

Beginning in the 1940s, Siskind's imagery shifted from social documentary to symbol and form. By the 1950s, this symbol and form, abstraction from a context combined with a passion for surface and texture came to identify his pictorial language. This was his mature artistic voice, and this is the work for which he is most celebrated today. Siskind explored great themes of art and literature in the photographic vernacular he invented, an idiom related to the explorations of painters Willem De Kooning and Mark Rothko. Siskind was the photographer accepted by the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. From 1947-1953 he had five one-man exhibitions at the Egan Gallery, which was the preeminent gallery for the abstract expressionists of the day.

In 1950 Aaron Siskind met up with his friend Harry Callahan at a summer workshop at Black Mountain College. Shortly thereafter, Callahan persuaded Siskind to join him to teach at the renowned Institute of Design in Chicago, where Siskind remained for almost twenty years, helping shape the next generation of artists and photographers. This work continued at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he was hired in 1971 and worked until his retirement in 1976. Aaron Siskind passed away in 1991 in Providence.

CREDIT: Stephen Daiter Gallery
http://stephendaitergallery.com/artists/aaron-siskind/

Very good. Minor wear.