Description
This is a Marc Lacroix portrait of Salvidor Dali. It is lot 2574 of Ro Gallery's Summer Fine Art Sale in New York, July 11th-12th. It will go on auction on July12th, with an opening bid of $2500. The estimate is $5000-$6000. The size is 20" x 16". You can find full auction details here and search for additional Lacroix photograph listings here.
Brief Bio
Lacroix died just yesterday, July 6th 2007, in Paris, the result of a prolonged illness. He was French, born in 1927 in France, a professional photographer all his life. He collaborated closely with his wife, Thérèse.
He primarily made his living as a photographer of art and architecture. His photographs were used in a wide variety of international art review publications. His photographs, however, include a wide variety of portraits as well. His works can be divided roughly into the different periods of his life:
- 1940s: Photographs of Paris during WWII
- Late 1940s: Portraits and landscapes of Morocco (he served in the military as a photographer)
- 1950s and 60s: Art and architecture photographs. His business was based in Casablanca.
- Late 60s: More art and architecture photographs, but he moved his business to Nice, France. During this time he also created portraits of jazz musicians living in France. Artists photographed include Sidney Béchet, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.
- 1970s: Collaboration with Salvador Dali.
Lacroix & Dali
An introduction to Dali written by Lacroix can be found
here (in Spanish). Lacroix worked closely with Dali on a variety of projects beginning in 1970. One of their first efforts was the joint production of a special 1971 Christmas edition of Vogue magazine. They continued to work together following this experience for nearly a decade. The collaboration included a variety of surrealist images (examples can be seen
here and
here. One is also found on page 3 of
this book) where Dali made himself the center of bizarre scenes (a typical title is "Dali with the Crown of Dali"). The use of special lighting effects can also be seen in these images; a shared interest in lighting was perhaps the origin of collaboration between the two artists. The pair also worked on developing stereoscopic images in order to realize ideas Dali had for three dimensional photographs and paintings.
As a result of this collaboration, Lacroix and his wife developed a close friendship with Dali and his wife/muse Gala. Over the decade they worked together, Lacroix shot a variety of photographs featuring both Dali and Gala in their home. The photograph for auction here is such an example.
A room in Dali's museum in Figueres, Spain has been permanently devoted to Lacroix's photographs. These photos were further made famous by an exhibition on Dali which ran from 2000 to 2004 through the Instituto Cervantes in Spain. It was entitled "
Dali, LaCroix, Gala : El Privilegio de la Intimidad". A catalog is available.A more complete bio can be found
here.
Sales
According to
this article (in Spanish), many of Lacroix's images of Dali were first made available at auction in 2005. Artprice.com lists 121 photographs sold at auction in September of 2005. Artnet.com has 6 entries listed in their database (listed under Mark Lacroix). Find details on completed auction results
here (requires log-in, but sign-up is trivial).
