Saul Leiter, Tanager Stairs, 1954, chromogenic print, printed later,13 1/2 x 9 inches (image) 14 x 11 inches (paper)
September 13 – October 6, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 13, 6 – 8 p.m.
NICOLAS METIVIER GALLERY
451 King Street West,
Toronto, M5V 1K4
T: 416.205.9000
www.metiviergallery.com
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 10 – 6 p.m.
Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of photographs by New York artist Saul Leiter. The exhibition will open on September 13 and will be on view through October 6 with a reception on Thursday, September 13 from 6– 8 PM.
Saul Leiter was born in 1923 in Pittsburgh, the son of an Orthodox Jewish scholar. Developing an interest in art as a teenager, he quit theology school and moved to New York when he was 23 to pursue a career in painting. Leiter was introduced to the darkroom shortly after his arrival and while he has continued to paint throughout his career, it was his exploration into colour photography in the 1950s onwards that set him apart creatively and has been the subject of recent acclaim.
Leiter was considered a member of the New York School, a group of photographers working between the late 1930s and early 1960s in New York City that redefined street photography. Most of Leiter’s contemporaries in this group, including Walker Evans and Robert Frank, only released works in black and white, adhering to the view that colour undermined the integrity of a photograph. Leiter in contrast exploited colour distortions and allowed for the accidental in the darkroom, abandoning notions of control.
This will be Saul Leiter’s first exhibition in Canada and will feature photographs from his seminal body of work, Early Color. A collection of metropolitan scenes, Leiter employed mirrors, windows and the random passerby in a spontaneous manner to create alluring and unusual compositions. His background as a painter is evident in his poetic use of subdued colour and eye for the abstract.
The exhibition coincides with an era of unprecedented recognition for Leiter’s work. This past spring, Leiter had a major career retrospective at the Hamburg House of Photography accompanied by a catalogue. Museum collections include: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Baltimore Museum of Art and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Leiter is represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York.