SUDEK JOSEF (1896 1976) A Streetcar at the Powder Tower Prag

Sale 2132 - Lot 347

Price Realized: $ 4,800

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500

SUDEK, JOSEF (1896-1976)
A Streetcar at the Powder Tower, Prague. Silver contact print, 3 1/2x3 1/4 inches (8.9x8.3 cm.), with Sudek's lengthy inscription, in pencil, on verso. Late 1920s; printed 1930s

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Additional Details

From the collection of Jan Sampalik (1903-1984), a friend of the photographer who would meet regularly in his studio to listen to classical music and acquired the name "Secka" (short for Section Chief); to the present owner.

The difference between the date of the photograph and the date of Sudek''s handwritten message (1957) may be attributed to his employment of an old print to send handwritten messages to his friends (instead of a page from a note book, or a post card). In this note, he writes about an evening visit at a friend''s house along with some other commitments.

The Czech photographer Josef Sudek is known as the "Poet of Prague." After returning from military service in World War I, where he lost his right arm, Sudek adopted photography as his profession and Prague as his muse.

He became a successful commercial photographer and opened his own studio in the late 1920s. Initially influenced by the soft-focus romanticism of Pictorialism, he soon became aware of the emerging new idioms of Modernism and Surrealism. But, Sudek formed a highly personal set of visual criteria and tropes: light is paramount. and a sense of absorption and mystery permeates his work. His compositions of forests and streets have a haunted, searching quality that elevates the landscape to a new form of personal expression.