The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 28, 2024

Ladder of Ladders

Ladder of Ladders

1931
(Mexican, 1902–2002)
Image: 24.4 x 18.3 cm (9 5/8 x 7 3/16 in.); Mounted: 30 x 23 cm (11 13/16 x 9 1/16 in.)
© Colette Urbajtel/ Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, S.C
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

Manuel Alvarez Bravo encouraged viewers to discover their own meanings in his pictures.

Description

Manuel Álvarez Bravo captured unusual scenes of everyday life in his home country of Mexico. In the three photographs included here, each focuses on isolated fragments of urban iconography through storefronts and billboards. Ladder of Ladders strikes a particularly dark note. The workshop pictured here manufactured caskets for children at a time when the infant mortality rate in Mexico City was 75%. The stacked coffins just inside the shop’s doorway formally play on light and darkness in the same way the photograph’s subject matter metaphorically references the tension between life and death in the city.
  • The artist, Mexico City
    Collection of André Breton [1896-1966], Paris
    2003
    (Calmels Cohen Auction, Paris, 2003)
    2007
    David Raymond [b.1979], New York, NY
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Spies, Werner. La révolution surréaliste: exposition présentée au Centre Pompidou, Galerie 1, 6 mars-24 juin 2002. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2002.
    Spies, Werner. Surrealismus 1919-1944: die surrealistische Revolution : Dali, Max Ernst, Magritte, Miro, Picasso--. Düsseldorf: K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2002.
    Breton, André, Agnès Angliviel de La Beaumelle, Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, and Claude Schweisguth. André Breton, la beauté convulsive: Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1991.
    Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E. Hinson, Ian Walker, and Lisa Kurzner. Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography : the David Raymond Collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. 2014. cat no. 24, p. 51
    Andre Breton: 42, rue Fontaine, no. 5047. Paris: Calmels Cohen, 2003.
  • Stories From Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).
    Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 19, 2014-January 11, 2015).
    Surrealismus 1919- 1944. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (July 20-November 24, 2002).
    La Révolution surréaliste. Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris cedex O4, France (organizer) (March 6-June 24, 2002).
    Andre Breton: La Beaute Convulsive. Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou (April 25-August 26, 1991).
    Focus on Minotaure: the Animal-Headed Review. Musée Rath (October 17, 1987-January 31, 1988); Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (March 17-May 29, 1988).
  • {{cite web|title=Ladder of Ladders|url=false|author=Manuel Álvarez Bravo|year=1931|access-date=28 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2007.142