Houston Architectural Ballade

Valentin Gertsman

ISBN 10: 096454931X ISBN 13: 9780964549319

Publisher: Mills & Morris Publishing Corporation, 2000

Synopsis

This book contains 104 photographs based on contemporary architecture and outdoor sculptures of Houston. The composite photographs in Chapter Three are abstract and symbolize some of the most important aspects of the city's life as capital of the international oil industry and center of medicine, space exploration, and culture. Houston, dynamic and constantly growing, is now facing the new millennium as one of the leading modern American cities. For the author, architecturally, Houston had reached the 21st century years ago.

About this title

About the Author:

Dr. Vertin L. Gertsman was born in Moscow in 1925, emigrated to the U.S. in 1974, and settled in Houston, Texas. Parallel to his medical career (Ph.D. in orthopedics), he began to exhibit his sculptures and photographs in 1981 on a professional level. His first cibachrome prints appeared in his shows in the Museum of American Architecture at Houston Baptist University in 1985. Since then, his exhibits have been shown across the United States and Europe, including Espace Canon, Paris; Amerika Haus, Berlin, Hotel de Pares, Monte-Carlo; Central house of Architects, Moscow; Cannon House Office Building, Washington D. C.; and in Houston at the Holocaust Museum Houston and the Museum of Printing History. Many of Gertsman's photographs are in public and private collections such as Bibliotheque National, Paris; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Collection of The Vatican; the George Bush Presidential Library & Museum, College Station, Texas; Tretyakov State Art Gallery and Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; and The Menil Collection, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Gertsman's photographs have appeared in many publications, including Zoom, Southwest Art Magazine, Traverse, Frank, Architecture USSR, Society, and New Russia.

Review:

Gertsman has invented new spatial configurations; his galaxy spins out along a path forever balanced between imagination and reality, as between earth and sky. --Kristian Feigelson, Zoom

There is something mysterious about all of Gertsman's work-something which escapes any purely aesthetic explanation, indeed something which resembles a fairy story. --John Berger, art critic and novelist

In the skilled hands of a surgeon-turned-photographer, the urban landscape is transformed into a fairyland of glass and steel, where the sky is always blue and the only population a transcendent cast of sky-scrapers. --Jacqueline Pontello, Southwest Art Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Mills & Morris Publishing Corporation
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 096454931X
• ISBN 13: 9780964549319
• Binding: Library Binding
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128