Erwin Blumenfeld

Untitled, New York,New York, 1957

Attributed to Erwin Blumenfeld

Silver gelatin print, photographic film.

 

DIMENSIONS:

Image size: 13.91 H x 11.08 W in.

Frame size: 28 H x 36 W in.

 

Unsigned/documented "Erwin Blumenfeld from Dada to Vogue"

Excellent provenance

Blumenfeld was born in Berlin on 26 January 1897. As a young man, he worked in the clothes trade and wrote poetry.[ In 1918 he went to Amsterdam, where he came into contact with Paul Citroen and Georg Grosz. In 1933 he made a photomontage showing Hitler as a skull with a swastika on its forehead; this image was later used in Allied propaganda material in 1943. He married Lena Citroen, with whom he had three children, in 1921. In 1922 he started a leather goods shop, which failed in 1935 He moved to Paris, where in 1936 he set up as a photographer[ and did free-lance work for French Vogue. After the outbreak of the Second World War he was placed in an internment camp; in 1941 he was able to emigrate to the United States. There he soon became a successful and well-paid fashion photographer and worked as a free-lancer for Harper's Bazaar, Life and American Vogue. Blumenfeld died in Rome on 4 July 1969.