Raoul Ubac
Surrealist photographer who burned his own negatives, then spent forty years carving slate.
Raoul Ubac was born at Malmedy in 1910, in territory that was German at his birth and Belgian by his adolescence. He joined the Surrealists in Paris in the 1930s and made photographs by techniques he pushed to the edge of destruction — solarisation, burning, and brulage, in which the negative is heated until the emulsion melts and the image begins to dissolve. He abandoned photography during the war and turned to slate: incising and carving low reliefs into stone from the Ardennes, which occupied him for the rest of his life, alongside stained glass and tapestry for churches. He died in 1985.
Two separate markets under one name. The 1930s Surrealist photographs are historically the most important part of the output, are scarce, and turn entirely on whether a print is a vintage one; later prints of the same images exist and are valued very differently. The slate reliefs are unique, heavy, and chip at the edges, and a damaged edge cannot be made good. There is a substantial output of works on paper, gouaches and prints from the post-war decades, which are the accessible part of the market.
If you own a work by Raoul Ubac
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