Lot 51
**Originally Listed At $400**
John F. Collins (American, 1888-1990). "Gear" gelatin silver print, ca. 1920s. A striking photograph entitled "Gear" by John F. Collins, an American photographer who used avant-garde photographic techniques to zoom in on modern tools of technology with a studio camera of his own design that he called Big Bertha. In this work, Collins takes an everyday object and raises it to the level of fine art by focusing on shapes, planes of light, tones, and textures. A fabulous piece from the Machine Age when modernists paid homage to America's glistening man-made environment and mechanical forms - everything from streamlined automobiles, airplanes and locomotives to skyscrapers and bridges and yes, even seemingly ordinary objects like electric toasters and gears! Size: 13.25" L x 9.375" W (33.7 cm x 23.8 cm) Size of matte: approximately 20" L x 16" W (50.8 cm x 40.6 cm)
John F. Collins was part of the first generation of 20th century American photographers - along with Edward Steichen, Charles Sheeler, and others - who employed avant-garde ideas into their commercial work and saw no distinction between fine and applied photography, much like the Bauhaus and Constructivist photographers in Europe. "Collins's work was usually simple, elegant, refined in conception and highly dramatic. The pictures emphasized Cubist flattened space, overlapping planes of light, vigorous and subtle tones and textures, to accentuate boldly the forms of the objects, which were treated as abstract shapes. Collins's powerful graphic images called attention to the uniqueness of each object, emphasizing 'the thing itself.' This was the core and heart of avant-garde photography of the 1920s." ("John F. Collins Photographs 1904-1946" Photofind Gallery Inc. 1987)
The piece was in the collection of pioneering patron of the arts, Ginny Williams. Sotheby's hosted a series of auctions featuring art and photography in the Ginny Williams Collection in June and July of 2020. Their press release began as follows, "Born in rural Virginia in 1927, Ginny moved to Denver, Colorado in the late 1950s with her husband, Carl Williams. An avid photographer herself, who studied with Austrian-American photojournalist and photographer Ernst Haas, her collecting journey began with classical figurative photography. Her passion and keen eye eventually prompted her to open her namesake gallery in Denver in the 1980s. While her passion for photography never waned, remaining a primary focus of both her gallery and private collection, her voracious curiosity quickly widened her curatorial focus. Over time, Ginny became increasingly courageous and experimental in her selections, venturing into Abstract Expressionism and Contemporary Art and following her artists themselves through gallery shows and museum exhibitions. As the years passed, Ginny became as much of a trailblazer as the artists she collected."
Provenance: private Idledale, Colorado, USA collection; ex-Ginny Williams collection of Denver, Colorado
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#171272
- Condition: Printed at lower right "COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC CO MASTER PHOTOGRAPHERS" Slight toning, a few crease marks, and losses to peripheries as shown. Set in a matte - no longer set in photo corners, but within protective cellophane - slight stains to matte. On the verso of the matte is a Ginny Williams Collection label identifying the photograph as well as handwritten notes as shown.
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