(Mexican, 1902-2002)
Mexican, (1902–2002)
Alvarez Bravo's unique photography combined Mexican subject matter with influences from foreign artists. He was an instrumental figure, along with the painters Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, in the artistic renaissance in Mexico that flourished after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1921. The J. Paul Getty Museum honored the artist for his 100th birthday with a major exhibition in 2001-2002 entitled "Manuel Alvarex Bravo: Optical Parables." - ULAN
A central figure to Mexico's cultural reinvention during the early decades of this century - and now the unquestionable modern master that he is today - Manuel Alvarez Bravo has continued to forge images that are mindful of precise composition and methaphor, with a formal range that is equally rich in mood and thematic scope. Alvarez Bravo's lyric environments have repeatedly explored the unexpected combination of vernacular everyday shapes as they often emerge in Mexico. Images that are classic modernist challenge to notions regarding the casual encounter of visual elements, they are also formal epiphanies that address the cityscape of Mexico and its myriad fleeting instants. Alvarez Bravo's images belong to a meaningful world where female nudes and mannequins speak jointly about the conflicting forms and significance of the represented body, or where a storefront display is suddenly transformed into a 'perversity of reflections'.
Born in 1902, his career began in the thriving artistic mileu of post revolutionary Mexico in the company of artists like Diego Rivera, JosT Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros along with expatriate photographers working in Mexico at the time: Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Weston and Tina Modotti.
La Visita, from portfolio Manuel Alvarez Bravo 1997.028.05
Manuel Alvarez Bravo portfolio 1997.028
Octavio Paz (Mexican, 1914- 1998) 1997.689
Photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo. 1997.029
