For Frieze Masters 2013 Bruce Silverstein Gallery proposes an exhibition of works by Aaron Siskind.
Photographer and educator Aaron Siskind holds a preeminent place in the history of American photography.
Beginning his photographic career in the 1930s as a social documentarian with the New York Photo League, he ultimately radicalized the medium by emphasizing the photograph as an abstract form of expression and an aesthetic end in itself. As the sole photographic member of the American Abstract Expressionist movement, his work was included in the original 9th Street Exhibition, the first showcase for these artists who later defined this movement in art making. Siskind showed regularly in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s with the Charles Eagan Gallery alongside the painters de Kooning, Kline, Rauschenberg and Rothko. For his Eagan gallery exhibitions, Siskind often mounted his photographs to masonite and backed them with wood strainers to that they could be hung on the wall without frames, similar to a canvas. We will display a group of these one-of-a-kind prints from the 1940s.
