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Wineskins (Odres)

A work made of gelatin silver print.

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  • A work made of gelatin silver print.

Date:

1932

Artist:

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Mexican, 1902–2002

About this artwork

During and following the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), art entered politics, and the handicrafts of indigenous peoples were celebrated as expressions of a new national culture and identity. Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who embraced nativist iconography from a distinctly modernist vantage beginning in the later 1920s, flourished in this Mexican renaissance. He fostered relationships with Mexican muralists as well as with European and American artists who traveled to Mexico, including such figures as Surrealist leader André Breton and photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Edward Weston. Julien Levy exhibited this print and other photographs by Bravo alongside works by Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans in the 1935 show Documentary and Anti-Graphic Photographs. In his press release for the show, Levy explained “anti-graphic” as something that defies or eschews generally accepted criteria for good photography and remains “in many ways the more dynamic, startling, and inimitable” on that account. Bravo’s image of Mexican goatskin vessels—a traditional means of transporting wine—suggests an intoxicating ambiguity between inanimate and animal creations in the spirit of the Surrealist movement.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Manuel Alvarez-Bravo

Title

Wineskins (Odres)

Place

Mexico (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1932

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Inscriptions

Inscribed recto, on mount, lower right, in graphite: "Muelvarez Bravo"; verso unchecked

Dimensions

15.9 × 23.9 cm (6 5/16 × 9 7/16 in.); Mount: 40 × 32.2 cm (15 3/4 × 12 11/16 in.); Image/paper: 15.9 × 23.9 cm (6 1/4 × 9 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Julien Levy Collection, Gift of Jean Levy and the Estate of Julien Levy

Reference Number

1988.157.9

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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