Inside Vicente Wolf’s Christie’s Public sale of Uncommon Man Ray, Diane Arbus, and Richard Avedon Pictures

Above: Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936, gelatin silver print.

Celebrated designer Vicente Wolf is promoting his 200-piece assortment of images in an upcoming Christie’s public sale, ELLE Decor can completely share. Divided into two components, the Vicente Wolf Photography Collection contains an internet sale working October 8–22, adopted by a reside public sale in New York on October 22. Among the uncommon items hitting the block are pictures by Man Ray, Diane Arbus, Constantin Brâncuși, Francesca Woodman, and Dorothea Lange.

“These are images that I have lived with, some of them, for close to 50 years,” Wolf tells ELLE Decor. “They’re like old friends.”

Unknown photographer, Marilyn Monroe, first cowl of Playboy, 1953, gelatin silver print with utilized ink.

The ELLE Decor A-List Legend started amassing images within the late Nineteen Seventies, after receiving a tip from the famed trend photographer and portrait artist Richard Avedon. “We were helping Dick with his apartment, which was above the studio, and he said in passing that I should get into photography—it was the new direction,” Wolf recollects. “He knew it was going to be really big.”

That dialog kicked off the designer’s foray into the medium—and his lifelong love of images. Wolf started methodically assembling a set guided by his personal instinct, analysis, and curiosity. “I think collecting is an addiction,” he says.

Richard Avedon, Igor Stravinsky, Composer, New York City, November 2, 1969, gelatin silver print, flush-mounted on linen.

He acquired these items himself, with out session from an artwork advisor. But he did have sure areas of focus. “The images I collect are very specific,” he says. “They’re images that speak of certain periods, whether it’s Russian avant-garde, Italian Futurism, or French Surrealism.”

Some artists, nevertheless, had been important to Wolf’s assortment—together with Dorothea Lange, the American documentary photographer famend for her hanging pictures of the Great Depression. “The intensity of her work made her one of the people I definitely wanted to have images by,” says Wolf.

Francesca Woodman, My House (Providence, Rhode Island), 1976, gelatin silver print.

So when an early model of Lange’s seminal Migrant Mother got here up for public sale, Wolf was intrigued. His curiosity deepened when he acknowledged that the 1936 {photograph} contained a element Lange had edited out of later variations. “Looking at the image, I realized that there was a thumb in the photograph, holding back the curtain,” he says. “And when I went back and researched it, I found that none of the images that everybody has or that you see in a museum show had the thumb.”

Wolf in the end acquired the work, which is now one of many marquee heaps within the Christie’s sale.

Study of Danaide of 1913, 1920’s by Constantin Brâncusi.

Another headliner is a picture of Marilyn Monroe that turned the primary cowl of Playboy in 1953. “To me, the Marilyn cover is as unique as the Lange image,” he says.

Wolf’s assortment ultimately grew to 230 pictures, and he ran out of wall house. “The reason I stopped collecting was I promised myself I would never just buy and store,” he says. “I had to have everything hanging.”

He is wanting ahead to the items discovering new properties. “I’m excited by the idea that they’re going to be appreciated and shared by new people,” he provides. “You wonder where they’re going, who’s going to buy them, and what else they’re going to be put with.”

The Vicente Wolf Photography Collection can be offered by Christie’s in two components: an internet sale working October 8–22, adopted by a reside public sale in New York on October 22. Estimates are nonetheless being finalized.

Geoffrey Montes is an affiliate editor at ELLE Decor with a severe love for all issues actual property and design. Before that, he labored at Architectural Digest, Galerie, and Preservation magazines, protecting all the things from jaw-dropping listings to world-famous architects and design occasions like Salone del Mobile and Homo Faber.