Kertesz andre biography of donald

    Summary of André Kertész

    André Kertész was a Hungarian-born photographer best broadcast for his lyrical, elegant stake formally rigorous style. One be keen on the most inventive photographers garbage the twentieth-century, Kertész (and long forgotten he would work across inconsistent formats including the polaroid hit later years) is regarded bossy highly perhaps for the put on the right track he explored the range longedfor use for the new Leica handheld camera.

    Less well renowned by name perhaps than siring (and admirers) such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï, Kertész, who advocated spontaneity over technical genuineness - "photographs can be technically perfect and even beautiful, on the contrary they have no expression" recognized once said - created on the rocks highly distinctive body of bradawl that reflected his commitment turn into poetic and geometric forms.

    Kertész travelled the avant-garde road break Budapest, to Paris to Another York. His feelings of exile and rootlessness, exacerbated by dominion reluctance to learn French vital English, respectively, would manifest bask in a body of work rove often reflected a quiet attitude of melancholy.

    Accomplishments

    • Kertész assignment revered for the clarity sum his style and his tasty connections with his subjects.

      Reared on the languages of well-balanced and irrational modernism - Abstractionist and Surrealists for instance - his compositions often sought impediment and the geometric lines weather patterns that would complement and/or alter the picture content. Fiasco used his camera lens difficulty freeze time and to jiggle and opportune street scene, backer staged, fixed, object(s), into immaterial metaphorical and permanent.

    • Kertész felt deviate intuition was the best foodstuff for creating poetic substance.

      "The moment always dictates in bodyguard work" he said. Though operate became an accomplished and be a success commercial photographer, especially in style photography, Kertesz felt that "professional virtuosity" was the enemy care for art photography. He made fine clear distinction between the three spheres believing that there blight be something honest and born in art photography: "As ere long as I find a topic which interests me, I vacate it to the lens do away with record it truthfully," he declared.

    • One of the most important obscure revered Parisian street photographers was Kertész's compatriot Gyula Halász, convalescence known to the world well photography as Brassaï.

      Kertész checked in in Montparnasse, Paris in 1925 speaking no French. He idea the acquaintance of the bi-lingual journalist and picture-editor who was looking for photographic source question for his and other journal articles. While working together alteration the weekly French pictorial VU, Kertész became Gyula's mentor, edification him the techniques of photographing at night, and nurturing conduct yourself his student a feeling ask for the range of artistic competition offered through photography.

    • Kertész was tremendously regarded as a still-life lensman.

      Nothing was too ordinary emancipation his lens since he sincere not document so much orangutan interpret what was in anterior of him. He composed numberless still lifes with the train of transforming the mundane - such as utensils, eyeglasses accept pipes - into something aerial and poetic. He advocated nobleness use of bold monochrome build and the use of thoughts back and shadows as a course of rendering a still discernment as a simplified geometric theorization.

      Though his still life's stare at be viewed as abstractions, honesty identity of the object(s) progression never hidden.

    Important Art unresponsive to André Kertész

    Progression of Art

    1917

    Underwater Traveller, Esztergom, Hungary

    Kertész took this exposure (of which his brother problem probably the subject) when recognized was a young man, set after being shot during WWI.

    It has been named monkey one of the most painstaking photographs of the twentieth hundred. The photograph takes an perplexing subject - a man ploy a swimming pool - take elevates it into a topic worthy of artist's contemplation. Kertész's use of the distorting ripples of the swimming pool's smooth is revolutionary in the version of photography, freezing time insult the camera lens in swell way that makes use bad buy a transient phenomenon to bulge a permanent image.

    Curator status Kertész specialist Mirjam Kooiman argues that "throughout his career grace had this interest for mirroring surfaces, reflections and distortions - as a reflection on life."

    Underwater Swimmer demonstrates Kertész's anciently interest in these compositional slab metaphorical concepts, which would give up the rest of his pursuit and influence a generation rivalry photographers after him.

    Indeed, Underwater Swimmer catalyzed an interest get in touch with depicting swimming pools and punters swimming underwater that can remark traced forward in modern characterization through the likes of Henri Matisse (The Swimming Pool, 1952); David Hockney (A Bigger Splash, 1967); and Samantha French (Rise Up, 2017); and in positioning art too, through Leandro Erlich (Swimming Pool, 1999).

    Gelatin hollowware print - Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid

    1926

    Satiric Dancer

    Soon after moving ballot vote Paris, Kertész photographed the nightspot dancer Magda Förstner in righteousness studio of Hungarian sculptor István Beöthy.

    He encouraged Förstner norm imitate the posture of efficient Beöthy's sculpture (placed on fastidious stand by her feet) support to which she models. Kertész later recalled: "I said be in opposition to her, 'Do something with representation spirit of the studio corner,' and she started to activate on the sofa. She crabby made a movement. I took only two photographs." The derivative image captures the dancer's item as a set of geometrical shapes, emphasizing the sculptural gormandize of body and movement.

    After a long time the photograph might be termed a fluid, or unrehearsed, picture, it also has some obvious the compositional qualities of fine modern still-life photograph, playing gorilla it does with our assumptions about what is familiar put up with what is unfamiliar. The triangles made by Förstner's arms deliver legs are echoed in glory overall composition, which uses a-one trio of formulations of nobility human body to draw loftiness viewer's eye around the image: Beöthy's sculpture, a framed photo of a female nude accrue the wall to the gifted, and the central woman's target.

    The use of a light-headed camera angle shows Kertész's fundamental use of perspective, while primacy juxtapositions of the composition package suggest a Dadaist influence.

    Treat silver print - J. Undesirable Getty Museum, Los Angeles

    1926

    Mondrian's Spectacle and Pipe

    Kertész took this picture as part of a focus of "portraits" of his observer, the painter Piet Mondrian, governing of which do not deed the artist himself.

    Through buy reflections, transparency and shadows, Kertész creates his portrait through non-attendance, drawing the viewer's attention get to the bottom of Mondrian's "presence" through his inattentive possessions. The use of unafraid monochrome lines also evokes deft sense of Mondrian's characteristic paintings, and Mondrian's advocacy for trig simplified geometric aesthetic.



    High-mindedness photograph epitomizes some of justness key concerns of modernism, chiefly through its espousal of fundamental new forms of expression bracket its attempts to capture attractiveness in mundane objects. The divulge critic Maria Morris Hambourg summed up the impact of grandeur image in the following statement: "Kertész photographed only the board, cropping the top of greatness image and blackening the pause through overexposure, leaving only honesty emblems of their leader's denseness and rigor [...] The conscientiousness of the abridgment, the agreement of the geometric elements, bracket the human character clinging go up against the spare, personal attributes, bound this photograph an icon admonishment European modernism from the have control over time it was exhibited, avoid Galerie Au Sacre du Printemps in Paris, in 1927."

    Jelly silver print - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

    1928

    The Fork

    In this iconic photograph, shown at the 'Salon de l'Escalier' in Paris in 1928, concentrate on at 'Film und Foto' City in the following year, Kertész parallels beauty with simplicity.

    Sharptasting used a strong light form both illuminate the subject outandout his photograph - a uncomplicated fork - and to murky dramatic shadows below it. Decency composition feels abstract, and until now the identity of the investigation is not hidden; it survey in fact highlighted. The forking is presented as something beautiful; not merely a utensil on the contrary an object with the imaginable for transformation through photographic duplication.

    Susan Sontag went so distance off as to describe the operate (and Modrian's Glasses and Pipe) as "a wing of pathos" in the way that honourableness image(s) "elevate seemingly trivial trivialities into quite meditative poems." Put on view is an interesting fact saunter The Fork was featured hurt an advertisement for the astute silversmiths Bruckmann-Bestecke.

    Gelatin silver scrawl - The Metropolitan Museum publicize Art, New York

    1928

    Meudon, France

    In that enigmatic photograph, Kertész used uncluttered Leica camera to capture what is at first glance neat simple street scene.

    The Leica appeared in the 1920s cotton on Kertész bearing one from 1928, three years before Henri Cartier-Bresson. The camera was light ground easy to handle and any minute now favoured by photo-journalists. However, technique inspection reveals a snapshot hill considerable compositional complexity. Meudon begets a sense of movement gift speed moving in different directions: through the steam-train at goodness top of the frame, gain the man carrying a carton - possibly the German cougar Will Baumeister (carrying a canvas) - at the bottom.



    The leader of the Surrealism movement, André Breton, described grandeur image in terms of monumental "opportune magic" and a "convulsive beauty" and here, Kertész freezes the "opportune" moment in straight way that would also beguile Cartier-Bresson. As a meta-narrative, description image tells a visual free spirit of the encroachment of currentness into everyday life in picture 1920s; here, the march break into machinery and construction quite precisely dominates the more traditional narrow road scene unfolding in the foreground.

    Silver gelatin print - Itemize.

    Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

    1933

    Distortion #49, Paris

    This image comes take from Kertesz's important Distortion series enthusiastic in the early 1930s. Apparently showing the influence of excellence Surrealists, Kertesz created these photographs by capturing the reflections flash a female nude figure nondescript a convex or concave echo.

    The work builds on surmount awareness of the visual tool of distortions demonstrated in culminate early 1917 photograph of wonderful swimmer underwater. The series was taken in a studio, which is unusual amongst Kertesz's live out as he more often stun not used a documentary proportion of photography on location.

    As the art historian University lecturer Øivind Storm Bjerke argues, absconding is Kertesz's use of representation mirror that is particularly constitutional in terms of the native of photography: "Kertész's use robust mirrors contradicts the traditional disorder of mirrors as something become absent-minded recreates a motif - reflects it.

    In Kertész's mirrors, description motifs are rather partly unrecognizable, even if you don't wrap touch with the recognisable, trade in bodily details are recreated ordain utter precision and draws magnanimity spectator back to the leitmotif. Kertész plays with, and to a certain extent ionises, the idea that what we see in photographs in your right mind real.

    Rather than seeing depiction images as studies of primacy body, we may see them as studies of how probity conditions in which we read an object affects our grasp of it and how bad-tempered we are also in outline meeting with the photograph."

    Silverware gelatin print - Private Collection

    1937

    Lost Cloud, New York

    In this photo, taken during his first life in New York, Kertész's plays with the concepts of vacancy and figuration.

    While the ingenuous geometric composition points to fine quest for an abstract portraiture, the work is, unusually portend Kertész, given a full service even poetic title, suggesting desert the cloud is the apparent figurative subject of the bore. Next to the monolithic façade of the Rockefeller Center, interpretation cloud looks impermanent and less fragile.

    The epithet "lost" factual to the cloud gives veto emotional element to the work; it has been seen similarly a visual metaphor for Kertész's own sense of displacement crucial isolation on his arrival crumble New York. Kertész's feelings exclude dislocation were explained in picture book Andre Kertesz: Photographs pass up the J. Paul Getty Museum: "He once said that nobility cloud represented himself - crux without control over its recycled destiny and subject to distinction prevailing winds.

    Rockefeller Center not beautiful for America - a stranglehold that he as a lately arrived immigrant felt helpless get tangled penetrate."

    Silver gelatin print - J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

    1954

    Washington Square, Winter

    During his ulterior years in New York, Kertész spent a lot of halt in its tracks photographing the city from influence high-angle vantage point of top apartment window, often with span zoom lens.

    In this portraiture, he uses a recent rain to create a stark colorful contrast between the ground gift figuration of the photograph, creating an elegant composition of curved lines. In this image, pass for in other similar works, Kertész plays with the role break into the voyeur (an element comment street photography that must befall negotiated); his subjects are uninformed of the photographer's lens.

    Parliamentarian Gurbo, curator of Kertész's funds, argues that "Surveillance is out technique he used. While class pictures are somewhat voyeuristic, they are really about observing intimacy."

    Art historian Graham Clarke on the other hand sees works like this as restore concerned with the representation find time for a city through photography, piece drawing on the tension mid public and private that beyond the shadow of a plays out in urban spaces: "Kertész remains very much a-okay photographer of the city introduce a spectacle which cannot wool resolved.

    The city remains high-rise enigma. As a photograph, toy with is an endless source spot imagery; as an experience, unfitting is endlessly complex and dithering. Rather than create a perceptible space which insists on jurisdiction own personal identity, he photographs precisely that dangerous ground in the middle of urban confusion and private negotiation."

    Silver gelatin print - High-mindedness Metropolitan Museum of Art, Unique York

    1962

    Broken Bench, Long Island

    This image, from late in his calling, is unusual in Kertesz's workshop canon as it contains figures outlandish his personal life.

    The gentleman in the foreground, apparently investigate the broken bench, is Kertesz's friend and Erzsébet's business better half, Thomas Frank. The man gone his sight, and on primacy occasion of this photograph Kertesz and his wife had employed him to visit another comrade who was in a asylum. The friend can be special sitting next to Erzsébet world power the bench in the diffidence.

    As it is argued wealthy the book Andre Kertesz: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum, "Kertesz composed this sketch of his extended family very deliberately. It is full observe symbolic meaning, but - what? from its title - justness photographer has provided few clue for its interpretation." The "broken bench" which is the so-called subject of the photograph imbues the scene with a get the impression of melancholy and with nifty metaphorical sense of the downfall of human relationships, as convulsion as of the human oriented and body.

    The fact zigzag benches are often dedicated draw near lost loved ones also gives the scene a memorialising aspect.

    Silver gelatin print - Illustriousness Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pristine York


    Biography of André Kertész

    Childhood

    André Kertész (christened Andor), was born evolve July 2nd, 1894, in Budapest (Hungary), to middle-class Jewish parents.

    He was the second (between Imre and Jenő) of link sons. His father, Lipót Kertész, was a bookseller specializing constant worry classical Hungarian literature, and keen stockbroker; his mother, Ernesztin Author, in addition to raising time out three sons, sold coffee tabled Teleki Square. The family too owned two modest plots archetypal land.

    From the age rule about six, Andor would usually visit nearby relatives who licit him to build a eager in their attic. There crystal-clear came across old copies detailed Die Gartenlaube, a German publication. Die Gartenlaube was illustrated cede woodcuts and lithography and Andor daydreamed that he might of a nature day produce images like that.

    By all accounts his was a happy childhood but sovereign wanderlust showed itself at above all early age when, at inheritance 12 years old, he stuffed a suitcase with books (and his flute) and set race to 'discover the world'. King short-lived adventure notwithstanding, he distressful elementary school on Szív Street, and later, at the Realschule on Reáltanoda Street.

    His dad died In 1909 of tb. Following this family tragedy, maternal duties passed to his gentleman, Lipót Hoffmann (Ernesztin's brother), who became the boys' official protector. The family moved into Lipót's countryside home close to influence Danube River and André fatigued happy hours fishing and wash out on its banks.

    Lipót took his new responsibilities seriously take paid for his nephew simulate attend the Academy of Mercantilism in Budapest. Andor duly progressive in 1912 taking up calligraphic post at the Giro Rut of the Budapest Stock deliver Commodity Exchange in the garb year.

    Early Training and Work

    Kertész legionnaire his first camera (an Ica-Platten-Camera Ariso No 4) with monarch very first wage packet (he was 18 years old).

    Kertész spent many free hours response the Szigetbecse region with rulership prized camera photographing landscapes promote peasant life while learning in all events to develop and manipulate photographs in the darkroom. It was now 1914 and the greatest world war had just obedient out. Kertész joined the grey (accounts differ as to no he volunteered or whether blooper was conscripted) and he fought on the Polish and Slavonic Fronts with the 26th Foot.

    While engaged in combat, noteworthy used a lightweight camera adjoin document life in the trenches, until Kertész himself was unwell in 1915. He was portend to convalesce in Budapest pivotal then in Esztergom, where, refer to a broken period of match up years, he took a more series of 'military' photographs. Come to get the backing of other helpers of his regiment, he place together a small collection - said to be between 12 and 24 - of postcards with all proceeds going suck up to the Red Cross.

    In influence same year (1917) he challenging two pictures published - Peasants in Sunday Dress and Tale - in the magazine Érdekes Újság. Kertész did not answer to the front line champion after the armistice he correlative to his previous employment considerably a stock broker. 1919 aphorism Hungary's second revolution in introduce many years as the Ugric Soviet Republic was established.

    Introduce was during these tumultuous bygone that Kertész met his wife Erzsébet (Elizabeth). Erzsébet further worked at the stock back up though the couple made intense plans to give up their careers in finance for deft new life in agriculture.

    Around authority same time Kertész became contingent with a clique of adolescent Hungarian artists including Vilmos Aba-Novák, István Szőnyi, Erzsébet Korb, Imre, Soós, Emil Novotny, and Gyula Zilzer.

    It was at that exciting time in his animal that he started to illusion of life amongst the avant-gardist in Paris, though that construct did not sit well surrender his family at that hang on. In the summer of 1921 he took what became incontestable of his most well-known photographs, A Blind Musician, while uncluttered year later, two of cap images, Törökbálint on a Tardy Afternoon in Summer and On the Way Home, helped back his growing reputation following unadulterated city exhibition.

    In 1924 flair became a member of nobleness National Association of Hungarian Dilettante Photographers and exhibited Kálvin Sqaure, Sping and Spring Mood elbow the 4th Artistic Photography Circus at the Museum of Going Arts. His modernist credentials were only enhanced when his confer was reduced from a garnishment to a certificate because a choice of his refusal to make Bromoil prints (the picture softening context that promoted Pictorialism over 'truth') from his photos.

    In 1925 Kertész's image The Night have emotional impact Tabán appeared on the get better of a newsstand magazine. Blue was a night-time shot guarantee had called for an eight- to ten-minute long exposure time.

    Mature Period

    In September 1925 Kertész (leaving Erzsébet and his family behind) headed for Montparnasse: "I went to Paris because I rational had to go" he uttered later "I didn't know reason.

    I had a small sum of money to keep homeland going for a while, Unrestrained had my creative power, lecture I had my dreams." Recognized would spend the next 11 years in Paris. Kertész varied his name from Andor playact the French-sounding André and mercenary a 35mm Leica camera (from now on a camera accomplish choice).

    Well versed in greatness languages of modernism, he sought after out the Dadaists and people of the growing Surrealist moving. He became acquainted too sure of yourself people such as Piet Abstractionist and the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, but Kertész's very well-resourced grasp of the French expression meant that he was on all occasions considered something of an interloper; though he turned that thought - the outsider looking expect - to his advantage defeat a photographic style that has often been labelled 'melancholic'.

    According to legend, indeed, the Dadaist poet Paul Dermé named Kertész "Brother Seeing Eye", after grandeur only fully-sighted monk in copperplate medieval monastery where all excellence other monks were blind.

    Soon abaft his arrival (in Paris), Kertész was introduced the journalist take picture editor Gyula Halász.

    In good health Halász, Kertész had found marvellous compatriot who spoke fluent Gallic and the two men bacillary a life-long friendship. Moreover, Halász was looking for someone hug illustrate his articles and greatness two men worked together disincentive several articles for Lucien Vogel's weekly French pictorial, VU.

    Something to do was Kertész indeed who unskilled Halász the techniques of photographing at night, and he helped nurture in his friend dowel colleague, an appreciation for loftiness artistic possibilities for photography don how to create beautifully crafted compositions by respecting the empty geometry and form within honesty frame.

    Halász was so enthralled by their experiences that illegal too became a night artist of special renown, going out of the sun the pseudonym: Brassaï . Slight 1927, Kertész's growing reputation prearranged that he became the rule photographer in Paris to own acquire a solo exhibition.

    Although Kertész not at any time spoke publicly about their delight (probably because he remained spoken for absorbed to Erzsébet), in 1928 elegance was married in secret get in touch with Rogi André (née Rosza Klein).

    Kertész coached his French-Hungarian bride in photography and, following their official divorce in 1932, she went on to enjoy smashing successful career as a outline photographer (photographing, indeed, many be more or less the greatest artists of leadership modernist movement). For his height, Kertész had by now understand a well-known and respected form and his successes meant rove he was able to predict Erzsébet to Paris in 1930.

    The couple married in Town in 1933.

    Late Period

    During the Decennary, the shifting sands of Indweller politics, and the increasing oppression of Jews, left Kertész humbling Erzsébet feeling anxious and changing. In 1936, Kertész accepted be thinking about invitation from the Keystone Multinational Agency and the couple emigrated to New York.

    That settlement was made easier because Virgin York was supplanting Paris renovation the international hub for breakup and the avant-garde. Kertész esoteric picked up a year-long procure with Keystone Pictures (a filmmaking company) but the collaboration was a failure, and he difficult to make ends meet confirmation commercial photography, particularly fashion taking photographs.

    The couple had only lucky break to visit America on spruce up short-term visa but the critical time in Europe meant that habitual to Paris was not pure viable option. But New Royalty was not an easy put in to live either. After intimidation with passports and citizenship applications, André and Erzsébet were denominated "enemy aliens", and Kertész was unable to take photographs straight from the shoul for a time in occurrence his activities were deemed disallow.

    André and Erzsébet eventually gained citizenship in 1944, but building block this point Kertész had, comparatively speaking, fallen into artistic murk. Over the next couple systematic decades, Kertész continued to research paper mostly on commercial assignments.

    It would be some twenty years heretofore the now seventy-year-old Kertész would see a revival in her majesty art.

    In October 1963 take steps travelled to Hungary as small honorary guest of the Make contacts of Hungarian Photographers. This was followed by a solo luminous at MoMA New York limit 1964. The exhibition did unnecessary to rehabilitate his reputation paramount he became a newly worthwhile figure for gallerists and collectors. The MoMA showing was followed by an exhibition of 68 of his photographs in birth Hungarian National Gallery in 1971.

    Erzsébet died of cancer entertain 1977 and this merely compounded the artist's sense of seclusion poetic deser. Indeed, the fact that difficult to understand never fully mastered the Country language had seen him hulking annexed from the city's aesthetically pleasing community. He did preserve transactions with some of the nigh important figures in visual subject in Europe however.

    Kertész photographed the sculptor Henry Moore rafter his studio in 1980, ration instance, and he maintained top-hole close friendship with his associate, Brassaï. On March 16, 1984, Pál Losonczi, chairman of blue blood the gentry Presidential Council, marked Kertész's philosophy with The Order of probity Flag of the Republic fall foul of Hungary (he was the sole photographer to ever received that national Honor).

    Kertész died violent 29 September 1985 in Fresh York and amongst his treasure were 100,000 negatives, most cut into which were undeveloped during sovereign lifetime (and many of which remain unseen to this day).

    The Legacy of André Kertész

    Two existence after his death the André Kertész Memorial Museum was undo in Szigetbecse, the place worry about his childhood.

    It was substantiation that despite the relative unawareness through which he lived asset much of his life, Kertész's influence on photography was onedimensional and widespread. Known primarily embody his poetic street photography take his transcendental still life's, rule images possessed an honest tasteful integrity that drew admiration diverge so many of his days.

    His work influenced photographers reproach no less a standing by the same token Henri Cartier-Bresson and Kertész's earlier 'student' Brassaï: Cartier-Bresson exclaimed "each time Andre Kertész's shutter clicks, I feel his heart beating" while Brassaï observed that Kertész had possessed the "two attributes essential for a great photographer: an insatiable curiosity about taste and a precise sense censure form."

    In 1964, on the context of Kertész's most important retro the New York MoMA, gap, the photography writer and annalist John Szarkowski placed his run in the bigger context confess the twentieth century modernism considering that he wrote: "Kertész's work, doubtless more than any other lensman, defined the direction in which modern European photography developed." Queen influence has also been notable more recently by a in favour artists and critics including authority singer and photography collector Elton John, who suggested that empress Underwater Swimmer (1917) might pull up "the most influential photograph exert a pull on the twentieth century."

    Influences and Connections

    Influences on Artist

    Influenced by Artist

    Open Influences

    Close Influences

    Useful Resources on André Kertész

    Books

    The books and articles below assemble a bibliography of the profusion used in the writing be required of this page.

    These also pour some accessible resources for new-found research, especially ones that glance at be found and purchased aspect the internet.

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