Matthew S. Witkovsky Livres

In the 1920s and 1930s, photography became an immense phenomenon across Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and Poland. Through magazines and books, in advertisements and at exhibitions, from amateur clubs to avant-garde schools, photographs emerged as a key vehicle of modern consciousness.This book presents the work of approximately one hundred individuals whose creations exemplify the potential of photography in Central Europe between the two World Wars. Foto brings together for the first time works by recognized masters such as the Russian El Lissitzky, the Hungarian László Moholy-Nagy, and the German Hannah Hóch—all of whom developed their photographic ideas in Germany—with contemporaries like Karel Teige and Jaromír Funke (Czechoslovakia), Kazimierz Podsadecki (Poland), Károly Escher (Hungary), and Trude Fleischmann (Austria), who are less well known today.Organized thematically, the book explores topics from photomontage and war to gender identity, modern living, and the spread of Surrealism. It shows the shared experience of modernity in the region, whereby recently founded nations and dismantled empires alike sought their place within the new world order established in the aftermath of World War I.The illustrations, drawn from more than seventy collections in America and abroad, include several previously unpublished works as well as many others never before available in high-quality reproductions.

Rediscovered: nudes by the Czech photographer František Drtikol (1883-1961) is considered to be the first Czech photographer enjoying international fame. Anna Fárová's legendary exhibit in Prague in 1972 led to the rediscovery of his briefly forgotten work. This elaborate, illustrated volume is devoted to the nude portraits, one of the focal points in Dritkol's oeuvre. Art Nouveau and Symbolism were strong influences on his early photographs, in which his nudes are presented as dreamy nymphs or femme fatales. After the end of World War I, he developed his own fascinating photographic style, characterized by geometric elements, expressive, dynamic poses, and dramatic lighting. An Art Deco photographer, as Fárová called him, Drtikol was inspired by Futurism, Expressionism, and Cubism to discover his own lyrical, formal vocabulary. Exhibition schedule: Stredoceského kraje Gallery /GASK/, Prague, May-August 2010.

Czech poet and photographer Jindřich Heisler (1914–1953) joined the Czech Surrealist Group in 1938, just as Nazi occupation of the country was driving the movement and Czech artists underground. Heisler published his first book of poetry a year later. In his brief and courageous career—Heisler died suddenly at the age of thirty-eight—he produced some of the most remarkable assemblage work of the Surrealist movement, including what is arguably the single-most important photobook produced in the 20th century, From the Strongholds of Sleep (1940-41).This gorgeously illustrated volume—with eighty color images of Heisler's assemblage pieces—introduces English-speaking audiences to his work, translating many of his writings for the first time and offering in-depth analysis of his postwar years in Paris in the company of André Breton, Benjamin Péret, the illustrator Toyen, and other major figures of the Surrealist movement.

Dílo Jaroslava Rösslera (1902-1990) nepochybně patří k nejvýznamnějším a nejoriginálnějším českým přínosům do světové avantgardní fotografie 20. a 30. let 20. století. Tato obsáhlá monografie poprvé ve větším rozsahu představuje nejenom Rösslerovy fotografie z českých a zahraničních veřejných i soukromých sbírek, z nichž mnohé dosud nebyly publikovány, ale také jeho kresby, které byly většinou zveřejněny teprve nedávno na výstavní retrospektivě Jaroslava Rösslera v Uměleckoprůmylsovém museu v Praze. Publikace v obrazové části i v textech pěti autorů sleduje vývoj Rösslerova díla od symbolisticky a secesně laděných začátků, ovlivněných jeho učitelem Františkem Drtikolem, přes radikální avantgardní fotografie, fotomontáže a koláže, osobitně rozvíjející podněty futurismu, konstruktivismu, nové věcnosti, poetismu a abstraktního umění, moderní reklamní snímky, vytvořené během jeho devítiletého pobytu v Paříži, až po experimentální fotografie, vzniklé v 50. - 70. letech po autorově delší tvůrčí přestávce.