- Fotogramm
Sheet: 7 3/16 × 9 7/16 in. (18.3 × 24 cm)
Explore Further
Like László Moholy-Nagy, his colleague at the innovative German design
school the Bauhaus, and his contemporary Man Ray in Paris, Franz Roh used
photographic materials in untraditional ways. Here, he set a comb, wine glass,
and light bulb on a sheet of photographic paper and exposed it to light. When
developed, the paper revealed a nearly abstract composition that recorded the
shadows of the objects as white against a dark ground. Perhaps without knowing
it, artists making such cameraless images, or “photograms,” in the 1920s echoed
the earliest surviving photographs, which similarly recorded the shadows of plants,
feathers, lace, and other objects.
ProvenanceFormer Bertonati assistant; [Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne]; purchased by Manfred Heiting, June 11, 1994; given to MFAH, 2002.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Stamped in blue, verso, upper left corner: dr. franz roh [underlined] // münchen 39 // pickelstrasse 11 // telefon 60277
Inscribed in pencil, verso, upper left: 85280[circled]
Inscribed in pencil, verso, upper left: fotogramm, FR
Stamped in purple, verso, upper left side: NACHLASS FRANZ ROH
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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