November 25, 2024 7:04 am

MAN RAY (1890/1976), AMERICAN DADAIST ARTIST – Not caring, but not indifferent

Creativity? Just the determination to realize my dreams

Landscape (Paysage Fauve), his 1913 watercolor on paper (35.2 x 24.6 cm), you can admire at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He produced major works in a variety of media, but considered himself a painter above all. This exponent of American Dadaism was born in Philadelphia, growing his artistic vocation as a painter, photographer and graphic artist. Growing up in New York, MAN RAY refused a scholarship, preferring to work as a draftsman. In 1912, he began to sign his works under the pseudonym “Man Ray”. Two years later he had bought his first camera.

In 1919, MAN RAY painted his first images with an airplane (a retouching tool commonly used for a graphic designer). The second world war forced him back in 1940 to the United States, where he moved to Los Angeles teaching photography and painting in a college. After the war he returns to Paris, where he will live until his death, continuing to paint and photograph. http://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video/videos/2014/10/surreal-life-man-ray.html He was buried in the Parisian cemetery of Montparnasse, where in his epitaph you can read: “Not caring, but not indifferent.”

His most famous art work is “Cadeau” (an iron, cast iron to which he had pasted nails 14, making it unusable. In Paris, in 1921 MAN RAY met Philippe Soupault, who hosted him in his bookshop, where the first exhibition was received, with a success that was also the result of his ability as a photographer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl4U01zKI0I In 1924, surrealism was officially born, and he is its official photographer, the one who falls in love with a French singer, his future favorite photographic model. In 1925, together with Jean Arp, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, his work was represented in a Parisian art gallery in the first surrealist exhibition.

The intellectual property of the images that appear in this blog correspond to their authors. The sole purpose of this site, is to spread the knowledge of these artists and that other people enjoy their works.

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