Arizona Landscape
1943
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image/sheet: 19.2 × 24.3 cm (7 9/16 × 9 9/16 in.) mount: 31.3 × 36 cm (12 5/16 × 14 3/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Stephen G. Stein
Accession Number
2021.5.12
Art Historical Context
Frederick Sommer's *Arizona Landscape* (1943) is a captivating gelatin silver print that invites visitors to explore the stark beauty of the American Southwest. Measuring 19.2 × 24.3 cm on a larger 31.3 × 36 cm mount, this intimate-scale photograph was created during World War II, a time when Sommer, an innovative photographer who settled in Arizona for his health in the 1930s, turned his lens to the region's dramatic terrain. His work often transformed ordinary scenes into poetic meditations on form and light, reflecting the modernist interest in abstraction and the sublime power of nature. ...
About the Artist
Frederick Sommer
Frederick Sommer (1905–1999) was one of the most singular and philosophically searching visual artists of twentieth-century America, a figure who defied easy categorization as he moved between photography, drawing, collage, and theoretical writing across a career spanning more than six decades. Born in Angri, Italy, and raised in Brazil, Sommer earned a master's degree in landscape architecture fr...