BOURDIN, Guy. Le Retour d’Ulysse.

[Paris]: No printing details, no date (c.1956).  Original mixed media painting.  Considered one of the best fashion and advertising photographers of all time.  Bourdin offered a radical alternative to conventional photography and in doing so set the stage for a new kind of fashion photography.  Whilst developing his new ideas in photography Bourdin was also an active and accomplished painter; his artworks showing many of the elements that were later employed in his photographic work.  Bourdin’s drawings and paintings were exhibited a number of times in Paris in the early fifties and at the Peter Deitsch Gallery, New York, in 1957.  The example offered here is a mix of ink, coloured pencil, paint, and collage on thick paper.  The image measures approx. 50cm by 65cm and is in very good condition, and signed by Bourdin in the bottom right corner.  A very nice example of Bourdin’s early artistic work.