Untitled
c. 1931-1960
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image/sheet: 29.6 × 23.1 cm (11 5/8 × 9 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Madame Gilberte Brassaï Estate
Accession Number
2013.5.14
Art Historical Context
Brassaï, the Hungarian-born photographer (born Gyula Halász, 1899–1984), is celebrated for his evocative depictions of 1930s Paris, particularly its shadowy nightlife and hidden urban poetry. Active in the city's bohemian circles alongside figures like Picasso and the Surrealists, he captured the city's underbelly—from fog-shrouded streets and graffiti-scrawled walls to intimate café scenes—in his seminal book *Paris de nuit* (1933). This untitled gelatin silver print, dating roughly from 1931 to 1960, exemplifies his mastery of nocturnal imagery during his most prolific decades. The gelatin ...
About the Artist
Brassaï
Brassaï was born Gyula Halász on September 9, 1899, in Brassó, Transylvania — a city then part of Austria-Hungary and now Brașov, Romania — from which he would eventually take his celebrated pseudonym. After studying painting and sculpture at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and later at Berlin's Academy of Fine Arts, he settled in Paris in 1924, initially working as a journalist and...