Maurice TABARD (1897-1984) Lot n° 40

Untilted , 1929 Photogram. Signed and dated tabard 29 in pencil, recto. Stamped on the reverse with annotation in pencil. Photogram. Signed and dated tabard 29 in pencil, recto. Stamped on the reverse with annotation in pencil. H_23,8 cm L_17,8 cm Provenance: private collection, acquired directly from Pierre Gassman Private collection Paris, aquired directly from Pierre Gassmann Maurice Tabard Maurice Tabard was born in Lyon on July 12, 1897 to an amateur photographer father and a musician mother. He was destined to play the violin, but failed at the Conservatoire and naturally became a silk designer in a Lyon factory. In 1914, his father took him with him on a business trip to the United States. He enrolled him at the New York Institute of Photography and Tabard, doing odd jobs to survive, set up his first photographic studio. In 1922, after the death of his father, he presented a few portraits to a major New York photographer, who hired him, and he thus became a portraitist for a wealthy clientele. During his stay in Washington, he did the portrait of President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. In 1928, he returned to France and became a fashion photographer for various magazines, including Le Jardin des Modes and Vu, whose director Philippe Soupault introduced him to. Around the same time, he obtained commissions for advertising and met Alexey Brodovitch. Tabard frequented the avant-garde of Montparnasse and set up his studio in Boulogne-Billancourt, a city that was then in the midst of a cultural boom. The Billancourt studios (cinema) had just been set up there, and Chagall, Landowski and Le Corbusier, among others, lived or worked there; it was the city of the patron Albert Kahn, who sent filmmakers and photographers on missions around the world. The artist then created in complete freedom, freeing himself from his rather classical style until then, and setting out to define his own purely photographic language. His main concern was the composition of the image. From that moment on, Tabard focused on the study of the components of a photograph: the objects, their forms, their materials, their lighting, their formal relationships rather than their appearance. It is a work of composition, as in painting. It was at this time that he met Magritte, to whom he later paid tribute in several of his images. "The object of his research is the space of the image, not the outside world, [...] he is [...] in the irrevocable (...)." When he discovered solarization... he deepens his knowledge of the technique which Man Ray does not want to reveal. Tabard wrote an article on the subject for Art et Métiers graphiques in 1933. This will be the cause of an irreducible quarrel between the two men, Man Ray not supporting that his invention (!) is thus explained to everyone. This is the opposite of Tabard whose research, both formal and technical, will be the subject of numerous courses and conferences, especially in the United States, in the following years. Tabard practiced drawing and studied painters and their works, Velasquez in particular, with whom he refined his understanding of the rules of composition. He takes numerous notes that will be used to enrich his courses and conferences, and that he will gather and organize years later in a draft treatise Geometry is the foundation of the arts, which remains unpublished to this day. In 1933 takes place his first personal exhibition, in Paris. He became friends with Brassaï, Kertesz and Man Ray, for whom he had great admiration. He practised solarisation (the Sabattier effect, discovered in 1862), which at that time was somewhat Man Ray's trademark (he often claimed to have invented it). In 1934, he was a photographer, alternating with Roger Parry, on the set of Jean Vigo's L'Atalante. In 1938, his photos were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York during the exhibition "Photography 1839-1937". In 1939-1940, he directed the photo studios of the magazine MarieClaire, which was withdrawn to Lyon, a non-occupied zone. In 1942, he was a set photographer for Gaumont, and accompanied the Decharme ethnographic mission to Africa. He made documentary films and numerous photos in Algeria, Niger and the French Sudan (now Mali). In 1944, he joined the army's film department and remained there until the end of the war, reporting in particular on Alsace. In 1946, he was called back to the United States where he taught photography while making frequent trips to Paris where he continued his personal research and made fashion reports. In 1951, he returned to France, but made many trips to the United States to give lectures on photographic composition. He was especially active in the United States where Alexey Brodovitch and Carmel Snow asked him to join the prestigious team of p