Dec 11, 2008 - Sale 2166

Sale 2166 - Lot 313

Price Realized: $ 7,800
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
KERTÉSZ, ANDRÉ (1894-1985)
"Mondrian's Glasses and Pipe, Paris." Silver print, 7 1/2x9 inches (19.1x22.9 cm.), with Kertész's signature, title and date, in pencil, on verso. 1926; printed 1950s-1960s
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Additional Details

From the Janet Fleisher Gallery, Philadelphia; to the present owner in the late 1980s.
André Kertész: A Lifetime of Perception, 201.
André Kertész: Of Paris and New York, 136.
André Kertész (National Gallery of Art), 51.


André Kertész arrived in Paris in October 1925. There he befriended fellow Hungarian artist Lajos Tihanyi, whose oil painting 'Still Life with Pipe,' (1923) had a profound influence on the young photographer, inspiring the creation of 'Mondrian's Pipe and Glasses.' Kertész made many portraits of Tihanyi and also photographed his artwork, studying its formalist composition and employment of light. Like Kertész's photograph, Tihanyi's painting made use of a sharp and angular point of a tablecloth and a geometrically simplified cup and pipe, which rests on a plate.

Kertész first met Piet Mondrian in 1926. The painter quickly asked Kertesz to his studio, to which which he returned several times during the year, photographing the arist and his friends. During this time he developed an affinity with Mondrian's ideas about artistic practice. It was at this critical point that Kertész produced his iconic photograph, 'Chez Mondrian,' which depicted the painter's very controlled and minimal work space set into relief against the curvilinear lines of the stairwell.


In 1928, the First Exhibition of Independent Photography (Premier Salon Indépendant de la Photographie) took place in Paris. Also known as Salon de l'Escalier (the photographs were hung in a staircase), the prints were selected by Lucien Vogel among other notable cultural figures. Kertesz exhibited fifteen photographs--more than any other living photographer included in the show--including portraits, Parisian studies and still lifes. This image received the most positive response, and was hailed as the best photograph in the exhibition by a 'Paris-Midi ' journalist, citing its precise and exacting forms.