ALFRED STIEGLITZ | 'SPIRITUAL AMERICA'

The artist

Georgia O’Keeffe, Abiquiu, New Mexico, 1946 (by descent)

By descent to the present owner

Sarah Greenough, Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set, The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs, vol. II 1923-1937, Washington, D. C., 2002, no. 889, p. 528, illustrated

Waldo Frank, Lewis Mumford, Dorothy Norman, Paul Rosenfeld, and Harold Rugg, eds., America & Alfred Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait, New York, 1934, pl. XXXI.C, illustrated

Doris Bry, Alfred Stieglitz, Photographer, Boston, Massachusetts, 1965, pl. 44, illustrated

Dorothy Norman, Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer, New York, 1973 (reprinting of the 1960 edition), pl. LV, p. 185, illustrated

Sarah Greenough and Juan Hamilton, Alfred Stieglitz: Photographs & Writings, Washington, D. C., 1983, p. 54, illustrated

Dorothy Norman, Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer, New York, 1990 (reprinting of the 1960 edition), p. 124, illustrated

Marion M. Goethals, Georgia O’Keeffe: Natural Issues, 1918-1924, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1992, p. 22, illustrated

Alexandra Arrowsmith and Thomas West, eds., Two Lives: A Conversation in Paintings and Photographs, New York, 1992, p. 100, illustrated

Weston Naef, In Focus: Alfred Stieglitz: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, 1995, pl. 31, pp. 66-67, illustrated

John Szarkowski, Alfred Stieglitz at Lake George, New York, 1995, p. 68, illustrated

Therese Mulligan, ed., The Photography of Alfred Stieglitz: Georgia O'Keeffe's Enduring Legacy, Rochester, New York, 2000, fig. 4, cat. 129, p. 21, illustrated

Sarah Greenough et al., Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, Washington, D. C., 2000, pl. 97, p. 296, illustrated

The photograph offered here, in its original frame with a The Intimate Gallery label, was one of seven photographs by Stieglitz included in the 1926 ‘International Exhibition of Modern Art Assembled by the Société Anonyme’ at the Brooklyn Museum. The Société Anonyme was founded in 1920 by Katherine S. Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray with the educational mission to provide the public with the opportunity to study the most recent movements in art. Their 1926 exhibition included works by artists from 22 different countries, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Demuth, Constantin Brancusi, John Marin, and Francis Picabia, among others. This exhibition was the largest of its kind since the 1913 Armory show, and the first survey of international postwar art, preceding the opening of The Museum of Modern Art in 1929.

The period between 1918 and 1929 was one of intense creativity for Alfred Stieglitz, inspired in no small part by his flourishing relationship with O’Keeffe and his admiration for her commitment to her craft. The two spent much time at the Stieglitz family home at Lake George, where he produced extended photo studies of clouds, buildings, and the female form. It was there that he made this close-up image of a 37-year-old gelded horse that had belonged to his father. Stieglitz’s 291 gallery had closed in 1917, as had production of his proto-Dada ‘291’ magazine (see Lot 12), but he continued to explore the European Dada spirit, giving his photographs witty titles imbuing them with sharp social commentary. Spiritual America is a not-so-subtle expression of Stieglitz’s view of the United States as repressed, culturally bankrupt, and devoid of spirit. Castrated, restrained, and stripped of its power, the stallion is no longer animal, now reduced to a cluster of geometric forms. 

At the time of this writing, no other print of this image is believed to have been offered at auction.