Anton BRUEHL
Australia 1900 – United States of America 1982
United States from 1919

not titled (cog wheel) c.1935
dye-transfer colour photograph
signed in pencil on recto on overmat
image 30.5 (h) x 24.4 (w) cm
Purchased 2002
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
NGA 2002.115

By the late 1920s Bruehl had already made his name as a photographer able to glamorise industrial products. In 1929 General Motors commissioned Bruehl to make a ‘camera portrait’ of the industrial designer-styled 1930 Cadillac V-16 engine.

In September 1929 Collier’s Weekly expanded his public profile as an artist-photographer, when it ran a double-page spread of his striking black and white close-ups of engineering forms under the heading ‘Beauty at a glance’. Bruehl was able to translate this theatricality, dynamism and verve into his colour photography of the 1930s.