Hans Breder is a prominent, if discreetly acknowledged artist who was originally from Germany and was a co-founder of the Intermedia Program at the University of Iowa in the late 1960's, where he was a teacher as well as a lover of the artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985). He took many of the photographs documenting her early performances in Mexico and elsewhere, images that are among the strongest in her Whitney retrospective. Indeed, a full understanding of Mendieta's career must take into account the collaborative aspect of that early work, as to some extent the exhibition catalog does.
That said, the difference between the two artists seems clear from comparative evidence. Several photographs from Mr. Breder's ''Ventosa'' series (1973), for which Mendieta served as a model, have been included in several major Mendieta shows such as the Whitney retrospective. In them, she lies nude in the surf on a beach in Oaxaca, Mexico, holding a large polished steel mirror that hides her torso but reflects her lower body, leaving her figure truncated, headless and composed of four splayed legs. Mr. Breder has since made other photographs using the mirrors and he has recently photographed women in a wooded section of Iowa where he documented several of Mendieta's performances.
*image (left)
Hans Breder
La Ventosa, 1973
gelatin silver print, 14 x 14 in
courtesy of the artist and Ethan Cohen Fine Art
