Photographs and Drawings, 1938-1950
4 November – 22 December Private view 3 November 6.00 – 8.00 pm

Faggionato Fine Art is pleased to announce their forthcoming exhibition of a collection of photographs and drawings from 1938 – 1950, by the celebrated American artist Frederick Sommer. Coinciding with the centennial anniversary of his birth the show offers a rare insight into the artist’s progress in two mediums in parallel time. Sommer was encouraged by his close friend Max Ernst to send this collection of his works to Europe with a view to the pieces being shown in Paris. From 1950 until recently the works have been in the collection of Christian Zervos and Cahiers D’art, the distinguished Parisian publisher, and have never before been exhibited. Widely known for his photographic works, the exhibition includes a number of Sommer’s iconic Surrealist images. Ranging in date from 1938-1949, the photographs included in the exhibition convey Frederick’s interest in objects with a historical background. In them he appropriates and transforms unremarkable found items, asking the viewer to let go of traditional notions of beauty and look at reality with a fresh objectivity. The dismembered doll’s head in Medallion, the decaying corpse in Jack Rabbit, the rags and mottled linoleum in Artificial Leg all transcend their original functions, triggering a host of associations which become powerful symbols of the body, mortality and time. Sommer’s devotion to drawing, although less well known, also produced remarkable results. The twenty glue-color drawings on black paper (sourced from the x-ray department of the local hospital) reveal a daring attempt to grapple with the big issue of the nature of representation. Although Frederick’s early career in landscape architecture made him adept at precise and functional renderings of reality, this group of drawings reflects a lively process of exploration in which he seems to consciously liberate his technique. All of the works are abstract in style, yet they simultaneously contain obvious figurative references. These confident, luminous images dance across the page, teetering between abstraction and figuration. Sommer’s fascination with this problem of perception and representation is also central to his work with photographic material.

Public Collections Sommer’s work is included in public collections in the United States and abroad: The Art Institute of Chicago; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; George Eastman House, Rochester; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C; The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena; The Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Tokyo Fuji Art Museum; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10.00 am – 6.00 pm For further information and images please contact Irene Grassi at irene.grassi@faggionato.com