other artists

• Ana Mendieta
• Francis Bacon
• Hiroshi Sugimoto
• Alexander Calder
• Willem de Kooning
• Jean Dubuffet
• Alberto Giacometti
• Henri Matisse
• Henry Moore
• Gerhard Richter
• Auguste Rodin
• Ed Ruscha
• David Smith
• Ellsworth Kelly
• Nikki Lee
• John Baldessari
• Arshile Gorky

in depth: Man Ray

Man Ray (1890–1976) grew up in New York and became a leading figure in both Dada and Surrealism. Influenced by the European avant-garde work that he saw in his many visits to Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291 and at the Armory Show contemporary art fair in New York, he began experimenting early in his career with the flatness that was characteristic of modern abstraction in both painting and collage.

Before relocating to Paris, Man Ray left his mark on the New York art scene as a founding member of the Societe Anonyme with Katherine Dreier and Marcel Duchamp and as a collaborator on New York Dada, also with Duchamp.

In Paris, he took his place as an important member of the international Dada and Surrealist circles. In the company of artists like Tristan Tzara, Max Ernst, and Andre Breton, he experimented with a vast array of artistic methods and invented his own, the “rayograph,” a method of producing images by directly placing them on photographic paper.

The Hirshhorn’s collection of Man Ray’s work is representative of the diversity of his creative production, as it includes everything from readymade sculpture to photomontage to oil painting. Despite his exploration of a full range of artistic media, Man Ray was able to make the biggest impact on twentiety-century photography, inspiring artists like Andre Kertesz and Brassai to take an innovative approach to the medium.