Photographs from the Private Collection of Margaret W. Weston

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Lot 5
  • 5

František Drtikol 1883-1961

Estimate
60,000 - 90,000 USD
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Description

  • František Drtikol
  • 'SNEZNA VLNA' (SNOW WAVE)
warm-toned, mounted, inscribed 'Autorem fotografie je muj otec Frantisek Drtikol' and signed 'Ervina Bokova-Drtikolova' by the photographer's daughter in pencil on the reverse, matted, framed, 1930s

Provenance

Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco

Acquired by Margaret W. Weston from the above, 1988

Exhibited

Monterey Museum of Art, Passion and Precision: Photographs from the Collection of Margaret W. Weston, January - April 2003

Literature

Passion and Precision: Photographs from the Collection of Margaret W. Weston (Monterey Museum of Art, 2003, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 34 (this print)

Another print of this image:

An Eclectic Focus: Photographs from the Vernon Collection (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1999, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 47

Catalogue Note

Few photographers explored the genre of nude photography as extensively as Czech photographer František Drtikol.  Starting in the first decade of the 20th 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 Snezna vlna (literally, 'Snow Wave'), Drtikol takes the genre in yet another direction, transforming the nude into a landscape.  Through the novel application of the panoramic format -- traditionally reserved for landscape photography -- Drtikol has created a graceful nude study that reads, from a certain distance, like the crest of a hill or, as Drtikol's title implies, a snow drift.