György Kepes
American, born Hungary, 1906–2001
Juliet with Peacock Feather
INV-1426
György Kepes
American, born Hungary, 1906–20011937-38
Juliet with Peacock Feather
György Kepes American, born Hungary, 1906–2001 →gelatin silver (developing-out-paper) prphotographic process
Date
1937-38
Medium
Gelatin silver print with gouache
Dimensions
Image/paper: 15.3 × 11.5 cm (6 1/16 × 4 9/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Maurice D. Galleher Endowment
György Kepes created a surreal portrait of his wife, the British painter and sculptor Juliet, by replacing her eye with a peacock feather. Half of her face appears shadowed, an effect the artist achieved by painting the right half of the print’s surface with a thin layer of gouache. The couple moved to Chicago in 1937, where György taught at the New Bauhaus (later the Institute of Design) and Juliet enrolled as a student. Both Kepes and the school’s founder, László Moholy-Nagy, corresponded with the Japanese art critic and Surrealist poet Takiguchi Shūzō, who admired the “spirit of experiment” in New Bauhaus works such as this one.
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