Known as the founder of Czech modernist photography, Frantizek Drtikol’s main subject of interest was the female nude. Through the earlier chapters of his activity, in the first two decades of the 20th century, he presented his models as symbolist archetypes, soft-focused, painterly, in the prevalent manner of the international photo-secessionists. After the Great War, his artistic perspective changed quite dramatically. The 1920s saw him favor a new body type – leaner, more athletic, typically with dark, short-cropped hair – and a new choreography of poses – dynamic, angular, modernist. He placed his generic, depersonalized figures, their facial features most usually lost in shadow, within striking, geometric sets constructed with the simplest of panels, melodramatic lighting, and hard shadows, their angularity matching the highly stylized postures of the models.

Temná vlna (The Dark Wave), 1926 is one of Drtikol’s most important and coveted images. Aside from the lot on offer here, the only other pigment print known to exist is in the collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague (UPM), along with ten variants of the image. During his lifetime, Drtikol printed multiple variants, using different croppings, and additional versions are also in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.