Seated Nude (Eva Révai) (Primary Title)
Seated Nude (Former Title)
Man Ray, American, 1890 - 1976 (Artist)
This Solarized photograph is not considered a portrait since the artist wrote the title “Seated Nude” on the verso. However, the model can be identified as Éva Révai (1901–2004), who moved to Paris from her home town of Budapest with her mother, the Hungarian photographer Ilka Révai (1873–1945), in the mid-1920s. Thanks to her mother’s connections and friendships with other artists, Éva Révai modeled for a number of modernist photographers over the next decade, including Nora Dumas, Ergy Landau, Man Ray, and André Kértesz, with whom she pursued a brief love affair around 1927. This photograph, in which the contours of Révai’s body are surrounded by a neon-like halo, has long been considered one of the artist’s finest Solarized compositions. “The technique enabled me to get away from photography, to get away from banality,” Man Ray explained in a 1964 interview. “Here was a chance to produce a photograph that would not look like a photograph.”
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