Oct 21, 2003 - Sale 1981

Sale 1981 - Lot 110

Price Realized: $ 48,300
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 40,000 - $ 60,000
DRTIKOL, FRANTISEK (1883-1961)
"Etude." Pigment print, 11x81/2 inches (27.9x21.6 cm.), with Drtikol's blind stamp on recto and his signature and date, in pencil, on mount recto; signed, titled and with the photographer's address, his notations "Pigment," and number "XXXIV," in ink, on mount verso. 1926
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details



Like American photographers working between the wars, the Czech avant-garde artist Frantisek Drtikol drew from the emerging modernist idiom. Entranced by the natural beauty of the body he developed a mature series of nude studies that feature the pigment process, a technique underscoring photography's painterly qualities. The highly refined pigment print, which is noteworthy for its dark saturated tones and relief-like layers of velvety blacks offering luminous shadow detail, requires meticulous brushwork to hand-coat photographic paper. While technique alone insufficiently characterizes Drtikol's photographic production it gives us some insight into why these prints are much sought after today.

"Étude" depicts a female figure artfully draped with dark cloth. The fashionably bobbed model demurely casts her gaze downwards, imparting a sense of mystery to the image. The angular line of the cloth against the subject's breast and leg recalls an evening gown or long black dress. The photographer pre-visualized this image, carefully composing and lighting the figure to create a "pose plastique" demonstrating an accomplished use of positive and negative space. Rhythms of light and dark not only reference this artist's aesthetic concerns, but also reflect his deep spirituality, which was influenced by Buddhism and esoteric mysticism. The figure, though in repose, has the quiet but unmistakable strength of the Roaring Twenties' new woman, a post-World War I glamorous figure whose short hair, athletic body, and sensual good looks distinguish her from the more classically feminine Victorian type.