With Robert Capa’s The Falling Soldier one of the most famous photo icons of the twentieth century comes under the hammer at the WestLicht Photo Auction on 23 November.
Capa took the picture in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. It depicts a republican militiaman in the very moment when he is fatally hit by a bullet. The image is “almost universally acknowledged as one of the greatest war photographs ever made and as a symbol for the fight against fascism”, as Capa authority Richard Whelan observes.
The print comes from the Black Star archive in New York and was made in 1936/37, probably enlarged by Capa himself, shortly after the picture was taken.
