Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 4

Craig Cowan
Craig Cowan — Concrete Abstractions (Hollyhock House, Frank Lloyd Wright)

1992

$350
£266.96
€304
CA$491.86
A$536.44
CHF 284.17
MX$6,431.14
NOK 3,619.05
SEK 3,309.35
DKK 2,271.16

About the Item

Craig Cowan — Concrete Abstractions (Hollyhock House, Frank Lloyd Wright) Limited Edition Book with Original Gelatin Silver Print, 1992 A stunning fine-press photographic portfolio by Los Angeles–based photographer Craig Cowan, Concrete Abstractions celebrates the geometric beauty of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House through a series of exquisite black-and-white abstractions. Edition: Limited to 100 copies, each signed, dated, and numbered by the artist on the title page. This copy is No. 25/100. Format: Unnumbered pages, approximately 8½ × 11 inches; softcover with printed wrappers housed in a custom cloth slipcase. Accompanied by: An original gelatin silver print measuring 8 × 6 inches (on 10 × 8 inch paper), titled Plate 10 from the book, signed, dated, and editioned in pencil by the photographer below the image. The volume reproduces 26 photographs—each exploring Wright’s architectural motifs in close detail. Cowan isolates the interplay of light, shadow, and relief in Hollyhock House’s distinctive concrete ornamentation, transforming architecture into a language of abstract form. Known for his mastery in the darkroom, Craig Cowan (American, b. Los Angeles) was a self-taught perfectionist whose prints are celebrated for their luxurious tonal depth and tactile surface. His subjects—ranging from desert landscapes to architectural icons and male nudes—demonstrate an extraordinary sensitivity to light and texture. Cowan manipulated chemical processes to sculpt light itself, producing works that hover between representation and pure abstraction. Collections: Cowan’s photographs are held in international public and private collections, including the Fototeca de Cuba (La Habana Vieja, Cuba), Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (Los Angeles), and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). A rare and elegant artist’s book—an essential acquisition for collectors of architectural photography, Wrightiana, or twentieth-century fine printing.
  • Creator:
    Craig Cowan (1947 - 1993, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1992
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 11 in (27.94 cm)Width: 9 in (22.86 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Palm Springs, CA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU308217064752

More From This Seller

View All
Obliques, abstract composition by Renaud Allirand
By Renaud Allirand
Located in Palm Springs, CA
Signed, titled and numbered from the edition of 6. The horizontal and vertical directional lines, and the use of black and white give Allirand’s prints their dynamic presence. Two ma...
Category

Early 2000s Abstract Abstract Prints

Materials

Etching, Aquatint

Composition #1850
By Renaud Allirand
Located in Palm Springs, CA
Signed and numbered by the artist. Medium: Etching and aquatint Image Size: 14 x 11.25 inches Edition size: 13 The horizontal and vertical directional lines and the use of black and...
Category

Early 2000s Abstract Abstract Prints

Materials

Etching, Aquatint

69 Palms, by Smith-Harrison
By David Smith-Harrison
Located in Palm Springs, CA
Signed, titled and numbered from the edition of 160. Palm trees in Cuban landscape with Spanish tile designs. Based on the artist's trip to Cuba where he taught printmaking in 1999. ...
Category

1990s Contemporary Landscape Prints

Materials

Intaglio

Modern Tower, by Roman Sustov
By Roman Sustov
Located in Palm Springs, CA
Signed, titled and numbered in pencil, from the edition of 50. This is one of a group of prints he completed during a residency in China. Using traditional stone lithography, Sustov...
Category

2010s Contemporary More Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Composition #111
By Renaud Allirand
Located in Palm Springs, CA
Signed and numbered from the edition of 12. RENAUD ALLIRAND was born in 1970, and currently lives and works in Paris. He is a prolific artist who has exhibited regularly since 1995....
Category

Early 2000s Abstract Abstract Prints

Materials

Drypoint, Etching

Untitled abstract #31 , by Santa Fe artist Robert Roach
By Robert Roach
Located in Palm Springs, CA
Unique monotype with collage, signed and numbered 1/1. Artist Robert Roach lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His one-of-a-kind, abstract monoprints were inspired by the landscape, cli...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Prints

Materials

Monotype, Mixed Media

You May Also Like

Shulman, Frank Lloyd Wright, Freeman House, LA, Black White Photography
By Julius Shulman
Located in Los Angeles, CA
American photographer Julius Shulman’s images of Californian architecture have burned themselves into the retina of the 20th century. A book on modern architecture without Shulman is inconceivable. Some of his architectural photographs, like the iconic shots of Frank Lloyd Wright’s or Pierre Koenig’s remarkable structures, have been published countless times. The brilliance of buildings like those by Charles Eames, as well as those of his close friend, Richard Neutra, was first brought to light by Shulman’s photography. The clarity of his work demanded that architectural photography had to be considered as an independent art form. Each Shulman image unites perception and understanding for the buildings and their place in the landscape. The precise compositions reveal not just the architectural ideas behind a building’s surface, but also the visions and hopes of an entire age. A sense of humanity is always present in his work, even when the human figure is absent from the actual photographs. Today, a great many of the buildings documented by Shulman have disappeared or been crudely converted, but the thirst...
Category

Mid-20th Century Landscape Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Casa Mila # 235 Edition of 2.
By José Castro
Located in West Palm Beach, FL
Casa Mila #235 is one of Jose Castro's Barcelona Series. No. 2 of edition of 2. This image is of the plaster ceiling at Casa Mila, built in 1912, in Barcelon...
Category

2010s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Archival Paper

Architectural Details in Spain
By Andy Warhol
Located in Beverly Hills, CA
This work was acquired directly from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The work is in pristine condition and has never been framed. This is a unique work which comes w...
Category

1980s Pop Art Black and White Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Brazilian Conceptual Modernist Photograph Jose Yalenti Architectural Abstract
Located in Surfside, FL
José Yalenti, (1895-1967) Brazilian Photographer "Beiras" (Sides) Photo, numbered 5/15, circa 1950, (printed later) on premium luster photo paper with ultrachrome ink. Art: 15" H x 11" W; Frame: 20 1/4" H x 14 1/4" W. Provenance: Dickinson Roundell Gallery José Yalenti’s Architecture photos seem at first disorienting, abstract black & white and grey surfaces, cut through by startlingly straight lines and a variety of surface textures. Much of his work is of mid-century Latin American architecture, by the likes of Oscar Niemeyer and Roberto Burle Marx. José Yalenti was born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1895. On April 28, 1939, a group of photography aficionados, including Yalenti, formed the Foto Clube Bandeirante, later changed to Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, or FCCB. Starting in the late 1940s, a contingent of FCCB photographers began creating photographs of abstracted architectural motifs (as in Architecture or Twilight), and eventually became known as the Escola Paulista, or “Paulista School.” Yalenti was among the members of the unofficial Paulista School. Between 1945 and 1960, the Paulista School photographers explored the rapidly changing formal qualities of São Paulo. By photographing skyscrapers and stairways at steep angles, creating closely cropped compositions from found geometric motifs, and capturing the flattening effects of shadows, Paulista School photographers investigated the new physical perspectives emerging in the urban environment. They created a distinctively Modern aesthetic that used strong contrasts of light and dark, geometric forms, linear compositions, and collapsed space to assert photography’s status as an artistic medium. As part of their pursuit of photographic Modernism, Yalenti and his fellow Brazilians adapted the stylistic innovations of U.S. and European photographers such as f.64, New Objectivity, Dada, Surrealism, and the Bauhaus, to the Brazilian context. Along with his FCCB compatriots—Thomaz Farkas, Geraldo de Barros, and German Lorca, among others—Yalenti explored the formal properties of black-and-white image-making. Yalenti and the Paulista’s School’s abstract photographs responded to the new trends in Brazilian Modernist architecture being developed by young architects in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In 1939, Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, and Affonso Reidy broke ground on the Ministry of Education and Health Building (MES), the building that would define Brazilian architectural modernism. The Rio-based team combined elements of Le Corbusier’s undecorated structural purity with Brazilian regional design to produce a more organic and “tropical” Modernism that responded to the local culture and climate. The sinuous and sensuous curves of Yalenti’s photograph are directly influenced by stylistic developments in architecture at the MES, including the building’s covered entry and its organically abstract contours. By 1957, when Yalenti created Architecture or Twilight, Brazil was globally recognized as an architectural leader. MoMA in New York City organized a popular exhibition of Brazilian architecture in 1943 (“Brazil Builds”), and highlighted the country again in its survey show "Latin American Architecture since 1945," that ran from 1955–56. Brazilian photography...
Category

20th Century Modern Black and White Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Globes Architecture Black and White, Palm Springs, C
By Kali
Located in New York, NY
Estate embossment on the front and estate stamped on the reverse
Category

1970s Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Black and White Abstract Photograph
Located in Queens, NY
Contemporary black and white abstract photograph in a black rectangular frame.  
Category

20th Century American Modern Photography