Early 20th Century "Liberation 1930" Surrealist Figurative Black and White Photograph by Konrad Cramer

Description

Konrad Cramer
German/American
1888-1963
Liberation 1930
Gelatin silver print mounted on the board by the artist
signed with the pencil … more Konrad Cramer
German/American
1888-1963
Liberation 1930
Gelatin silver print mounted on the board by the artist
signed with the pencil
artist studio sticker on verso
35 x 25 cm
13.3/4 x 9.7/8 in
Photography is not only a 'making of pictures' but training in deeper and wider seeing, which gives to its practitioners greater happiness and fuller enjoyment of life as their eyes are opened to the new horizons.
Konrad Cramer wrote eloquently of his chosen medium. Based in the fertile Woodstock, New York, artistic community along with Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Russell Lee, Cramer was both educator and artist. He ran a summer school for miniature camera photography in the 1930s and later taught one of the first American college courses in photography at Bard College. Although he began as a painter of abstract, geometric forms in bold colors, Cramer is best known as a photographer.
Philosophically disillusioned with painting and the competitive artistic climate surrounding it in Woodstock, Cramer turned his attention increasingly to photography, writing in 1959: "Am I not justified to give the camera the same wide freedom and range that I give to the brush? Basically [sic] it is thinking and feeling in form and rhythm [sic]--what matter which tool the artist chooses." Like Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy, Cramer explored the technique of solarization and made photograms.

Exhibitions
2007 Konrad Cramer (1888-1963): Photographs, Zabriskie Galley, New York, NY (Modern and Contemporary Landscapes, Forum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1958 Long Island University, Long Island, NY
1956 Woodstock Guild of Craftsmen, Woodstock, NY
1953 Whitney Annual, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
1952 State College, New Paltz, NY
1937 Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA
1936 Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA ,Whitney Museum summer show, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
1935
Abstract Painting in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, Weyhe Gallery, New York , NY
1934
Wanamaker Regional, Wanamaker Gallery, New York, NY
1933
Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA
1932
Woodstock Group, College Art Association, New York, NY, Club Latin, Cincinnati, OH,Warwick Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1930 Dudensing Gallery, New York, NY
1929 Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA
1920 Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA
1919–1920 The Florence Gallery, New York, NY
1919 Y.W.H.A., New York, NY less