Pitcher, 1926

“I am an amateur and I intend to be one all my life. For me, photography should capture the true personality of things…Remember the reporters and the amateurs—both of them want only to make a souvenir or a document: that is pure photography.”– André Kertész, 1930

The photograph offered in the current lot is a rare print of the image in this cropping. An alternate image, offered at Phillips de Pury in 2005, is the only other known print from this negative, and appears to show the original full frame. The tighter cropping and shifted angle of the present image is imbued with a sense of immediacy and a more Modernist sensitivity that reflects the rigor of the Bauhuas aesthetic.

While both prints are mounted on vellum, a treatment that Kertész reserved for exhibition prints, the difference in styles between these two prints from the same negative mark his artistic evolution at a critical pivot in his life. Kertész left his native Budapest for Paris in 1925, two years after winning the silver medal at the Hungarian Amateur Photographers’ Association. He chose to forgo the award following the Association’s stated requirement that he print his image in bromoil, a favored method of the Pictorialists. For him, a photograph was meant to celebrate—not obfuscate, through atmospheric tricks in the darkroom—its mechanical origin and strengths, emphasizing line, volume and form.

In Paris, Kertész found a cadre of likeminded Modernists whose vision aligned with his own. Within eighteen months, Kertész became enmeshed in the artistic milieu, settling at the Hôtel des Terraces, a hub for avant-garde thinkers. Among them was Michel Seuphor, a Dutch émigré who, from 1921 to 1925, was the editor of the Dutch literary publication Het Overzicht (the Survey), which championed Constructivism and dada. In 1926, Seuphor introduced Kertész to his fellow Dutchman, Piet Mondrian. The contact with Mondrian, the leading abstract artist in Paris, left a profound impression on Kertész, who subsequently infused his intimate, personal compositions with a more geometric, formalist approach. It was in 1926 that Kertész produced some of his most iconic images, including Chez Mondrian; Satiric Dancer, Paris; Cello; The Stairs of Montmarte, Paris; and Mondrian’s pipe and glasses, Paris. The image in the current lot, Pitcher, is believed to have been taken the same year.

According to Sandra Phillips, Kertész’s new approach during these years is reflected in two new subjects: 'the detail that is both an abstraction and a kind of document, and the found still life' (Phillips, André Kertész, Of Paris and New York, p. 52). The attraction to still-life is understandable for according the opportunity to defamiliarize the quotidian through an abstract filter. The camera was adept at compressing depth of field into a single flattened plane, resulting in an image that was at once recognizable and alien. Kertész developed a manner that was uniquely his own, later lauded for its ‘mystery of the object’ by the reviewer Rolf Henkl. Establishing his success as a quintessential Modernist, in 1927 Kertész was granted an exhibition at the gallery Au Sacre du Printemps, owned by Jean Slivinsky, a close friend of Michel Seuphor. The following year Kertész was given a second exhibition, held at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, titled ‘1er Salon Indépendant de la Photographie.’ (Paul Outerbridge’s Ide Collar, 1922, lot 20, was also shown at the same exhibition.) It may be the case that the original cropping of Pitcher (fig. 1) was shown in that exhibition given the date annotated on the mount.

In 1929 Kertész’s work was first included in an international photography exhibition, the ‘International Ausstellung von Film und Foto’ in Stuttgart. The exhibition was overseen by László Moholy-Nagy, who was renowned for his tenure at the Bauhaus (which had ended in 1928) and his prolific experimentation in photography, print making, collage and painting. The formal introduction between Kertész and Moholy-Nagy, however, did not happen until the following year, when the latter came to Paris to help install the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition at the Grand Palais. That exhibition was the first time that Parisians were exposed to the unified German modernist vision, with its emphasis on the industrial, mechanical, serious and polished. Moholy-Nagy asked Kertész to photograph his Light Modulator, which Kertész did. That same year, 1930, Kertész moved to 75, boulevard Montparnasse, the same address noted in the stamp on the back of the current lot.

It is noteworthy that Kertész chose to revisit his Pitcher negative from 1926 four years later. By then, he had established his reputation as a leading Modernist photographer; had met many of the leading figures in abstraction; refined his lyrical vision of found objects, exhibited alongside the most prominent figures in the Parisian art scene, and granted the opportunity to compare his personalized sensitivity with the cold, flawless Utopian vision that permeated across German Modernist photography.

It is not known for which exhibition the current enlargement print, signed and mounted on vellum, was made in 1930, but through its disoriented angle, tight cropping and underlying Modernist appeal—depicting the artist’s personal belongings—this print presents Kertész at his prime.