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Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Nudes: The Blue House
Born in 1902, Manuel Alvarez Bravo is Mexico's most celebrated living photographer. His far-reaching body of work includes many of the 20th century's most recognizable and iconic images. Collected here is a seductive, timeless, and entrancing sampling of the maestro's nudes, images taken in 1939 and as recently as the 1990s. Sensitively edited and sequenced by Ariadne Kimberly Huque, and with an impassioned and poetic introduction by Carlos Fuentes, this delicate, elegant volume beautifully reproduces some of Bravo's most favorite work, and provides an intimate window through which to view the career of one of the camera's true masters.
96 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 2002
6 people want to read
About the author
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
54 books9 followersManuel Álvarez Bravo, the pioneer of artistic photography in Mexico, is considered the main representative of Latin American photography in the 20th century. His work extends from the late 1920s to the 1990s.
Álvarez Bravo was born in downtown Mexico City on February 4, 1902. He left school at the age of twelve in order to begin making a contribution to his family’s finances after his father's death. He worked at a textile factory for a time, and later at the National General Treasury.
Both his grandfather (a painter) and his father were amateur photographers. His early discovery of the camera awakened in him an interest that he would continue to cultivate throughout his life. As a self-taught photographer, he would explore many different techniques, as well as graphic art.
Influenced by his study of painting at the Academy of San Carlos, he embraced pictorialism at first. Then, with the discovery of cubism and all the possibilities offered by abstraction, he began to explore modern aesthetics. He had his initiation into documentary photography in 1930: when she was deported from Mexico, Tina Modotti left him her job at the magazine Mexican Folkways. He also worked for the muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Álvarez Bravo is an emblematic figure from the period following the Mexican Revolution—often called the Mexican Renaissance. It was a time of a creative fertility, owing to the happy—though not always tranquil—marriage between a desire for modernization and the search for an identity with Mexican roots, in which archaeology, history and ethnology played an important role, parallel to the arts. Álvarez Bravo embodied both tendencies in the field of visual arts.
Between 1943 and 1959, he worked in the film industry doing still shots, which inspired him to realize some of his own experiments with cinema.
While he was alive, he held over 150 individual exhibitions and participated in over 200 collective exhibitions. According to several critics, the work of this "poet of the lens" expresses the essence of Mexico. However, the humanist regard reflected in his work, the aesthetic, literary and musical references it contains, likewise endow with a truly universal dimension.
He died on October 19, 2002, at the age of one hundred.
Álvarez Bravo was born in downtown Mexico City on February 4, 1902. He left school at the age of twelve in order to begin making a contribution to his family’s finances after his father's death. He worked at a textile factory for a time, and later at the National General Treasury.
Both his grandfather (a painter) and his father were amateur photographers. His early discovery of the camera awakened in him an interest that he would continue to cultivate throughout his life. As a self-taught photographer, he would explore many different techniques, as well as graphic art.
Influenced by his study of painting at the Academy of San Carlos, he embraced pictorialism at first. Then, with the discovery of cubism and all the possibilities offered by abstraction, he began to explore modern aesthetics. He had his initiation into documentary photography in 1930: when she was deported from Mexico, Tina Modotti left him her job at the magazine Mexican Folkways. He also worked for the muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Álvarez Bravo is an emblematic figure from the period following the Mexican Revolution—often called the Mexican Renaissance. It was a time of a creative fertility, owing to the happy—though not always tranquil—marriage between a desire for modernization and the search for an identity with Mexican roots, in which archaeology, history and ethnology played an important role, parallel to the arts. Álvarez Bravo embodied both tendencies in the field of visual arts.
Between 1943 and 1959, he worked in the film industry doing still shots, which inspired him to realize some of his own experiments with cinema.
While he was alive, he held over 150 individual exhibitions and participated in over 200 collective exhibitions. According to several critics, the work of this "poet of the lens" expresses the essence of Mexico. However, the humanist regard reflected in his work, the aesthetic, literary and musical references it contains, likewise endow with a truly universal dimension.
He died on October 19, 2002, at the age of one hundred.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 12, 2016
timeless wonderful and stark photography of the human female form... mexican yet universal... a mystery and a story in each photo
with a short powerful introduction by CARLOS FUENTES.
"Que extraordinaria sabiduría humana y artística la de este gran maestro. Don Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Sus fotografías hacen espiritual el cuerpo de la mujer. Pero hacen fisicamente visible el alma de la mujer.
"Por ello, le damos las gracias y lo miramos para siempre mientras el, para siempre nos mira."
with a short powerful introduction by CARLOS FUENTES.
"Que extraordinaria sabiduría humana y artística la de este gran maestro. Don Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Sus fotografías hacen espiritual el cuerpo de la mujer. Pero hacen fisicamente visible el alma de la mujer.
"Por ello, le damos las gracias y lo miramos para siempre mientras el, para siempre nos mira."
April 5, 2012
This is an excellent book..Great condition and terrific pics...And a good price for a first edition...my only complaint is the time it took to arrive..I waited nearly a month..Yes worth the wait, but then I knew it would be..Still a good purchase and an excellent addition to my bookshelf..For a collector this is a must..For a photographer this is a glance into the world of a master...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews