František Drtikol (3 March 1883 – 13 January 1961) was a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographers As in other ...

known for his nudes and

portraits A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...

Life and work

Drtikol was born in

Příbram Příbram (; german: Freiberg in Böhmen, ''Przibram'', or ''Pribram'', in 1939–1945 ''Pibrans'') is a town in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 32,000 inhabitants. It is well known for its mining history, and mor ...

into a merchant family, the younger of three children, brother of sisters, Ema and Maria. He was married twice: in 1921–1926 to Ervín Kupferova, with whom he had a daughter, and then in 1942–1959 (until her death) to Jarmila Rambouskova As a young man he wanted to be a painter, but his father directed him to train for a less precarious career as a photographer.Bureš, J. "Drtikol, František". Grove Art Online. In 1901, aged 18 and after an apprenticeship, he enrolled in the Teaching and Research Institute of Photography in Munich, a city which was major centre of Symbolism and Art Nouveau and which was influential on his career. From 1907 to 1910 he had his own studio in Příbram, but had little success. In 1910 he relocated to Prague, where he established a portrait studio on the fourth floor of a Baroque corner house at 9 Vodičkova, now demolished. In Prague he made many portraits of notable cultural figures. In the 1920s and 1930s, Drtikol received significant awards at international photo salons. He was a contributor to the illustrated weekly ''

Pestrý týden Pestrý týden was a Czech illustrated weekly magazine published from 2 November 1926 to 28 April 1945, during the First and Second Czechoslovak Republics and during the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. It helped establish top photo-reporters ...

.'' Jaroslav Rössler, an important avant-garde photographer, was one of his pupils. Drtikoll's portraits and nudes show development from pictorialism and symbolism to modern compositions in which the nude body is juxtaposed with large geometric structures and thrown shadows. These are reminiscent of Cubism, and at the same time his nudes suggest the kind of movement that was characteristic of the

Futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abo ...

aesthetic. He began using plywood figures in a period he called "photopurism". The resulting images resembled silhouettes of the human form. In the final stage of his photographic work Drtikol created compositions of little carved figures, with elongated shapes, symbolically expressing various themes from

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...

. In 1935 he gave up photography and concentrated on painting, Buddhist religious and philosophical systems. Drtikol died in Prague on 13 January 1961. A collection of some 20,000 of his prints is in the

Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague Founded in 1885, the Prague Museum of Decorative Arts ( cz, Uměleckoprůmyslové muzeum v Praze or UPM) is housed in a Neo-Renaissance edifice built from 1897 to 1899 after the designs of architect Josef Schulz. It opened in 1900 with exhibitions ...

Publications

*''Z dvorků a dvorečků staré Prahy'' (''From the courtyards and yards of old Prague''; 1911) *''Le nus de Drtikol'' (1929) *''Žena ve světle'' (''Woman in the Light''; Prague, 1938)

Bibliography

*Anna Fárová: ''"František Drtikol. Photograph des Art Deco"'', 1986. *Vladimír Birgus: ''"Drtikol. Modernist Nudes"'', Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco 1997. *Vladimír Birgus and Jan Mlčoch: ''"Akt in Czech Photography"'', 2001. *Alessandro Bertolotti: ''"Books of nudes"'', 2007. *Stanislav Doleža, Anna Fárová, Petr Nedoma: ''František Drtikol – fotograf, malíř, mystik''. Galerie Rudolfinum, Praha 1998 *Karel Funk: ''Mystik a učitel František Drtikol - Pokyny pro duchovní cestu'', Fontána 2001 *Jan Mlčoch: ''František Drtikol – Fotografie 1901–1914''. KANT, Praha 1999

References

External links

Teachings of František Drtikol

The57Persones of Central Bohemia Region - FRANTISEK DRTIKOL

Radio Prague

on ttp://photography.about.com photography.about.com
Fototorst: František Drtikol

Art of the photogravure

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Drtikol, Frantisek 1883 births 1961 deaths Czech photographers Czech erotic photographers People from Příbram Portrait photographers Czech Buddhists