Irving Penn

Irving Penn Fish made of Fish (New York) 1939 Vintage gelatin silver print. 24.6 x 34.1 cm. Flush-mounted to original card, signed, dated, titled, inscribed 'Print made c. 1939' in ink as well as copyright stamps and stamp 'Signed silver prints of this negative not exceeding 13' (number handwritten), on the verso. - Mounted firmly to card, matted and framed under glass. Provenance Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York; private collection, Northern Germany Literature Irving Penn Photographs. A Donation in Memory of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, exhib.cat. Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Stockholm 1995, ill. p. 51 (variant) Although created several years before the actual beginning of his career, Irving Penn's early work 'Fish made of Fish' already shows those characteristics that would later establish his reputation as one of the most recognised photographers of the 20th century: Here, the visually concise composition, reduced to its essentials, goes hand in hand with Penn's typical high-level technical precision. The photograph, in which the graphic artist's trained eye is clearly evident, dates from 1939, when Irving Penn, who had completed his art and design studies at the 'Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art' a year earlier, was working as a freelance designer in New York. Four years later, Alexander Liberman, art director at 'Vogue', offered him a position in the magazine's graphics department and encouraged him to realise his ideas in photography. In October 1943, the first cover of 'Vogue' photographed by Penn was published, for which he created numerous portraits, fashion spreads, still lifes and photo essays during his long career and alongside his work as a freelance advertising photographer. The still life was to occupy a central position in his oeuvre throughout his life: well into old age, he arranged food, objects or skulls into compositions that derived their visual power from the balanced interplay of line and volume.