ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE | Amanda Lear, 1976

Vintage silver print, flush-mounted, in a two-toned silk mat and black wood frame designed to the artist's specifications. A Holly Solomon Gallery label on the reverse.

Holly Solomon Gallery, New York, 1977
Bukowskis Stockholm, Prints, Contemporary, Silver and Jewellery, October 29, 2008, lot 621
Sotheby's, New York, Photographs, 6 October 2010, lot 207
Private collection, UK

This photograph, in its original silk exhibition mat and frame, is essentially in excellent condition. There is some very minor soiling in the margin below the left bottom edge of the print, and in the center of the right margin edge. The print is flush-mounted to a somewhat unevenly-trimmed board. The original black-over-blue silk exhibition mat is in very good condition, although somewhat frayed at the edges where it meets the frame interior. This is common for this sort of silk-covered board mat, and is only visible when viewed outside of its frame.
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This early exhibition print is unique in this presentation.  As with the Mapplethorpe study of Carnations offered in the following lot, Amanda Lear is in its original two-toned silk-covered double-mat and simple black frame.  This presentation was designed by Mapplethorpe himself for his earliest exhibitions.  The Holly Solomon Gallery label on the reverse of this print's frame suggests that it may have been shown in that gallery's Portraits exhibition in 1977, one of Mapplethorpe's earliest one-man exhibitions.  Although this photograph is not signed, its status as an early print by Mapplethorpe has been confirmed by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.  According to information provided by the Foundation, it is not unusual to see unmarked photographs from this early phase of the photographer's career.  Mapplethorpe had his first exhibitions of gelatin silver photographs in 1977 (Light Gallery exhibited his Polaroids in 1973), before he had instituted a system for editioning, marking, or signing his prints.  Mapplethorpe subsequently produced prints of this portrait of French celebrity Amanda Lear in an edition of 5 gelatin silver prints. 

Sotheby's wishes to thank Monica F. Eulitz of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation for her assistance in researching this photograph.

© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation – Used with permission