Gitterman Gallery

This selection of avant-garde Czech photography focuses on rare vintage works by two seminal figures, František Drtikol and Josef Sudek. Each created exquisite prints that added dimension to their innovative visions. František Drtikol’s (1883-1961) photographs are distinctly emblematic of the Art Deco period (1920s and 30s) by merging styles of Symbolism, Pictorialism, and Modernism. Though most known for his Pictorial images of nudes in Modernist stagings, we highlight a series from the early 1930s he referred to as “photopurism.” In this series, he photographed paper cut-outs and carved wood figures, as Mannerist silhouettes of the human form, in geometric abstract environments, to explore themes of Buddhism. He gave up photography in 1935 to concentrate on painting. Josef Sudek (1896-1976), after having lost his right arm in combat during World War I, devoted his life to photography. Working with a large format camera, he stayed close to home. He primarily worked in his studio in Prague, photographing intricately constructed still lifes and atmospheric views through his studio window, as well as portraits, landscapes and his city. Though Sudek chose seemingly conventional subjects, his delicate prints convey the poetic magic of the photographic medium. In addition, we present an iconic image by Sudek’s early teacher, Jaromír Funke.

This exhibition brings together a selection of rare figurative works, most of which include masks, one of the artist’s most recognizable motifs. Masks have long associations to the surreal and the macabre but Meatyard also employed them to obscure the identities of his subjects. This approach elevated his images from the specific to the universal. Though an optician by trade, Meatyard was close with an important Kentucky literary circle and enjoyed friendships with writers Wendell Berry, Guy Davenport, Thomas Merton and Jonathan Williams. Intuitively, Meatyard understood the importance of narrative in images and, perhaps even more importantly, he understood how ambiguity in images opened up possibilities to engage the viewer. The exhibition features three sequences of images from 1968-69. Each of the sequences bears a nonsensical title, once again offering the viewer a chance to employ their own imagination to determine the meaning of each work. Meatyard’s experience as an optician gave him knowledge about lenses and vision that informed his work as a photographer, as did his interest in philosophy, especially Zen. Spirituality underlies his often haunting and complex imagery. Tragically, Meatyard died from cancer in 1972 at the age of 46.