Elie Lotar III

Artist Herbert Matter (American, born Switzerland. Born April 25, 1907, Engelberg, Swit, 1907 - 1984)

DateNegative 1965; print 1978

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsSupport: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Mat: 19 3/4 × 23 3/4 in. (50.2 × 60.3 cm)

ClassificationsPhotograph

Credit LineGift in Honor of Norman S. Ives, Professor, Artist, Publisher and Friend of Herbert Matter, 2021

Object number2022.9.13

DescriptionHorizontal page with frontal view of sculpture of head and shoulders of human male. Shoulders and neck highly modeled. Figure is at center of composition filling frame vertically. At left, ear protrudes and naso-labial creases and chin crease are defined. Photographic viewpoint is from slightly below, emphasizing creases, line of mouth, nostrils, and eyes.
eMuseum Notes

Emuseum Notes

Like Herbert Matter and Alberto Giacometti, Elie Lotar was an artist working in France who was associated with Surrealism. Lotar was a photographer and filmmaker who used the camera to highlight the absurdity and brutality of everyday life. He was a political activist and some of his pictures critique mid-twentieth century wartime society. At the end of his life, Giacometti worked with Lotar as the model for several sculptures, and was completing the last of them when he died in January 1966. Herbert Matter’s photograph of this sculpture leaves out the torso and shows a resolute expression, perhaps resigned to future decline and death.

On View

Not on view

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