a suite of 3 ferrotyped photographs, each with the photographer's name blindstamped in the margin, framed, Guggenheim Museum exhibition labels on the reverse, 1934 (3)

The family of the photographer

Ubu Gallery, New York, 1998

Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Hans Bellmer, Photographe, December 1983 - February 1984

Washington, D. C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, L'Amour Fou: Photography & Surrealism, September - November 1985

New York, Guggenheim Museum, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection, June - September 2004, and 4 other international venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)

West Palm Beach, Norton Museum of Art, A Show of Hands: Photographs and Sculpture from the Buhl Collection, January - March 2008

These prints:

Jennifer Blessing, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection (Guggenheim Foundation, 2004), pp. 107 and 203

Rosalind Krauss and Jane Livingston, L'Amour Fou: Photography & Surrealism (Washington, D. C.: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1985), figs. 44-46

Alain Sayag, ed., Hans Bellmer: Photographe (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1983), pp. 114-15

These small, early ferrotyped prints are in generally excellent condition. In high raking light, insignificant pitting and surface scuffs are visible, as is typical of prints that have been ferrotyped. The reverse of each print is hinged with rice paper tape to a modern mount.When examined under ultraviolet light, these prints do not appear to fluoresce.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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These three studies of conjoined hands by Hans Bellmer are standouts within a body of work devoted nearly exclusively to exploring sexuality, anthropomorphism, and aberrance, frequently to extreme ends.  But the photographs resonate in meaningful ways with work that Bellmer executed in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, in a variety of media, in which hands play a crucial role.  The most obvious of these are the photographs Bellmer made in 1946 as studies for his etched illustrations for George Battaile’s surreally erotic novella Histoire de l’oeil.  Inspired by Battaile’s writing, Bellmer created a series of photographs of two women in a variety of sexual positions, in which the hands seem to act independently as investigative and penetrative agents.  The entangled limbs of the two women, too, bear a resemblance to the intertwined fingers of the fraught hands in the photographs offered here.

In Bellmer’s 1954 lithograph The Articulated Hands, a pair of hands acts out a similar set of positions as the hands in the photographic triptych.  In an untitled drawing from 1951, Bellmer presents a figure that can be seen alternately as a contorted hand or a monstrous multi-limbed seated figure.  Bellmer’s 1950 drawing Child and Seeing Hands juxtaposes a menacing pair of hands (equipped with eyes) with a young girl rolling a hoop. (cf. Sue Taylor, Hans Bellmer in the Art Institute of Chicago: The Wandering Libido and the Hysterical Body, for fuller discussion on the above-mentioned works).   While Bellmer’s fundamental focus throughout his career was his fantastical depiction of the female form, he frequently used hands to punctuate and energize his images.