František Drtikol

pigment print, the photographer's copyright blindstamp on the image, mounted, signed and dated by the photographer on the mount, signed, titled, numbered, and annotated with the photographer's studio address 'Praha II. Vodičkova 7. R. É. S.' and 'Pigment' by the photographer in ink, dated and numbered in an unidentified hand in pencil and red crayon and with U-P Museum Praha and number stamps on the reverse, matted, 1925

Brent Sikkema Fine Art, New York

Acquired by the Quillan Company from the above, 1989

Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 56 (this print)

Another print of this image:

Anna Fárová, František Drtikol: Art-Deco Photographer (Munich, 1993), pl. 25

This pigment print has intense deep brown/black tones and is on paper with a very faintly pebbled texture. It is in excellent condition. The print is mounted to stiff board, with minor foxing at the extremities.
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Few photographers explored the genre of nude photography as extensively as Czech photographer František Drtikol.  Starting in the first decade of the 20^th century, and extending through the 1930s, Drtikol's nudes ranged from sublime and atmospheric Pictorialist studies to frankly erotic imagery, from the phantasmagoric to hard-edged, modernist abstractions.  In the 1920s, Drtikol embarked upon a series of nudes photographed amidst increasingly elaborate constructions of geometric shapes.   These images combined the photographer's expert handling of light and shadow with his distinctive style of photographing the female form.  In the photograph offered here, Drtikol has placed the nude within a constructed modernist stage set.  His skillful lighting has surrounded her with deep shadows, beautifully rendered in this bravura print.   

Drtikol used the undulating shapes visible on either side of the figure in this photograph in at least three other female nude studies, Wave (Dark Waves), Wave II, and Study, as well as in the still life, Construction (Birgus, The Photographer František Drtikol, pls. 38, 41, 42, and 43), all made in the same year as the photograph offered here.