Audart Gallery and Art-is-Life Tribute to Frantisek Drtikol

The Nude in Modernist Photography

Frantisek Drtikol (1883-1961)

Czechoslovakia

It was the experimental work of Frantisek Drtikol and other modernist photographers that brought the female nude into the realm of photography. By the 1930's, Drtikol's work clearly reflected the signs of a new age, as makeshift backdrops and harsh spotlighting (below, left) gave way to a sleek, more decorative style (below, right).

    

1922                                                1930

 

One of Drtikols' more interesting photographs, titled "Dancers - 1930" (below) portrays eight dancers with their arms distorted, their hands fingerless, to resemble the legs of insects (see detail). This is one in a series of photographs where Drtikol used deliberate distortion, in the developing process, to achieve unusual effects.

 

1930

detail

Not surprisingly, the women portrayed in this photograph have a slender, Erte-like glamor, representing the new icon of the female, which would become increasingly popular in painting, photography, sculpture and fashion.

      

1919                                                             1926

 

 1930's

 

Audart Gallery

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Frantisek Drtikol

(1883-1961)

 

Born in 1883 in Pribram, Czechoslovakia, Drtikol died in Prague in 1961.

He served as an apprentice at a portrait studio in Pribram before attending (1901-1903) the Munich Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt fur Photographie, a teaching and research institute for photography in Munich. Here he worked under the tutelage of G. H. Emmerich and Hans Spurl.

He was strongly influenced by Jugendstil, or Art Nouveau.

After his schooling, Drtikol returned to Czechoslovakia and earned his living as a photographer, working for various studios, then opened his own studio in Prague, where he specialized in portraits of writers and artists. He joined the Prague Cooperative Artel, lectured and continued to paint, making backdrops for his photographs. Eventually he devoted himself completely to his painting.

Like so many artists before and since his time, Frantisek Drtikol died in 1960, lonely and forgotten, his life's work unrewarded and unrecognized. Today, he is considered one of the most important photo-graphers of the 20th century.

Many of his photographs are in the hands of private collectors but there have been and will continue to be major exhibitions of his work around the world.