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Lot Essay
František Drtikol’s powerful oeuvre is a telling mirror of perhaps the most turbulent epoch in the history of art. European art and culture
responded with dramatic effect to the upheaval and trauma of the First World War; conflict and revolution found their expression or
repercussion in anarchic and radical art – through the ideas of such movements as Dada, Constructivism, and Futurism. The career of
Czech photographer Drtikol reflects these turbulent times, at each stage expressing the spirit of the era while also remaining true to an intensely felt personal vision.
Drtikol’s principal – one might justifiably say obsessive – subject was the female figure, usually nude. Through the earlier chapters of his activity, in the first two decades of the 20th century, he presented his models as symbolist archetypes, soft-focused, painterly, in the prevalent manner of the international photo-secessionists. After the Great War, his artistic perspective changed quite dramatically. The 1920s saw him favour a new body type – leaner, more athletic, typically with dark, short-cropped hair – and a new choreography of poses – dynamic, angular, modernist. He placed his generic, depersonalised figures, their facial features most usually lost in shadow, within striking, geometric sets, constructed with the simplest of panels, melodramatic lighting, and hard shadows, their angularity matching the highly stylised postures of the models.
Dritikol had hoped to become a painter, but his father steered him towards an apprenticeship in a local photographic portrait studio that
was to determine the direction of his career as an artist. This practical training was followed by study at the Lehr und Versuchsanstalt in Munich between 1901 and 1903. By 1910, after military service and spells in professional studios in Germany, Switzerland, and his native Czechoslovakia, he was installed in his own studio, working as a portrait photographer while pursuing independently his own creative ideas. He soon started to attract attention and became a regular exhibitor in the Salons that showcased photography as a noble art form, often in the form of fine prints made by special processes that emphasised the involvement of the photographer as skilled artisan as well as gifted artist. The present work is an example of the pigment process favoured by Drtikol that produced characteristic deep, rich tones.
He made his lasting mark in the history of photography with his impactful and expressive studies of the figure that have been qualified
as Constructivist and Art Deco. The pictures are not merely formal or decorative exercises, however. They have an inner strength that
flows from the significant cultural influences and trends on which they draw, and from their role as messengers from the philosophical and psychological depths of their author. Drtikol’s nudes are staged in ways that appear to acknowledge the melodramatic lighting and the gestural theatricality of Expressionist cinema. His liberated figures and their expressive body movements call to mind both the growing cult of the body, inspired from Classical, Olympian imagery, and the foundations of modern dance, as exemplified in the work of influential, ground-breaking German dancer and choreographer Mary Wigman and Drtikol’s wife, Ervina, whom he met in 1919 and married the following year, was a dancer and became one of his models.
Accounts of František Drtikol tell of a charismatic though complicated personality whose studio became a lively meeting place for artists, writers, musicians, philosophers and kindred spirits. Drtikol was clearly both inspirational and challenging. After achieving international recognition through a body of work that has ensured his lasting reputation, he sold his studio in 1935, turning his attention to painting, to meditation, and to mystical and occultist philosophy.
responded with dramatic effect to the upheaval and trauma of the First World War; conflict and revolution found their expression or
repercussion in anarchic and radical art – through the ideas of such movements as Dada, Constructivism, and Futurism. The career of
Czech photographer Drtikol reflects these turbulent times, at each stage expressing the spirit of the era while also remaining true to an intensely felt personal vision.
Drtikol’s principal – one might justifiably say obsessive – subject was the female figure, usually nude. Through the earlier chapters of his activity, in the first two decades of the 20th century, he presented his models as symbolist archetypes, soft-focused, painterly, in the prevalent manner of the international photo-secessionists. After the Great War, his artistic perspective changed quite dramatically. The 1920s saw him favour a new body type – leaner, more athletic, typically with dark, short-cropped hair – and a new choreography of poses – dynamic, angular, modernist. He placed his generic, depersonalised figures, their facial features most usually lost in shadow, within striking, geometric sets, constructed with the simplest of panels, melodramatic lighting, and hard shadows, their angularity matching the highly stylised postures of the models.
Dritikol had hoped to become a painter, but his father steered him towards an apprenticeship in a local photographic portrait studio that
was to determine the direction of his career as an artist. This practical training was followed by study at the Lehr und Versuchsanstalt in Munich between 1901 and 1903. By 1910, after military service and spells in professional studios in Germany, Switzerland, and his native Czechoslovakia, he was installed in his own studio, working as a portrait photographer while pursuing independently his own creative ideas. He soon started to attract attention and became a regular exhibitor in the Salons that showcased photography as a noble art form, often in the form of fine prints made by special processes that emphasised the involvement of the photographer as skilled artisan as well as gifted artist. The present work is an example of the pigment process favoured by Drtikol that produced characteristic deep, rich tones.
He made his lasting mark in the history of photography with his impactful and expressive studies of the figure that have been qualified
as Constructivist and Art Deco. The pictures are not merely formal or decorative exercises, however. They have an inner strength that
flows from the significant cultural influences and trends on which they draw, and from their role as messengers from the philosophical and psychological depths of their author. Drtikol’s nudes are staged in ways that appear to acknowledge the melodramatic lighting and the gestural theatricality of Expressionist cinema. His liberated figures and their expressive body movements call to mind both the growing cult of the body, inspired from Classical, Olympian imagery, and the foundations of modern dance, as exemplified in the work of influential, ground-breaking German dancer and choreographer Mary Wigman and Drtikol’s wife, Ervina, whom he met in 1919 and married the following year, was a dancer and became one of his models.
Accounts of František Drtikol tell of a charismatic though complicated personality whose studio became a lively meeting place for artists, writers, musicians, philosophers and kindred spirits. Drtikol was clearly both inspirational and challenging. After achieving international recognition through a body of work that has ensured his lasting reputation, he sold his studio in 1935, turning his attention to painting, to meditation, and to mystical and occultist philosophy.