Lot 121

Josef Sudek (1896 - 1976) COMPOSITION

Josef Sudek born into a family of artists in Kolín in 1896. His father, Václav, was a painter and decorator, and died shortly before Josef’s third birthday. In 1910 Josef Sudek registered for an apprenticeship with a bookbinder – it was there where he also started to take photographs. Three years later he received his journeyman’s certificate and got a job with a bookbinder in Nymburk. At the age of 18, Sudek enlisted in Northern Bohemia for World War I. In early 1916 he compiled a small album of original photos of Prague, but in May he was hit by shrapnel on the Italian front and lost his right arm. Sudek spent the first half of the 1920s at Invalidovna, the war veterans’ dormitory in Prague, where he retrained as a professional photographer; in 1922–1924 he studied photography at a graphic arts school. In 1927 he started to work for the publishing house Družstevní Práce and signed a lease for a studio at Újezd in Prague’s Lesser Quarter, where he founded his own photography company. He also started to build his collection of fine art, focusing on the work of František Tichý, Jan Benda, and later Andrej Bělocvětov, whom he supported as a patron. He also established friendships with Ladislav Sutnar and Emil Filla. In October of 1934 he held his first solo exhibition at Krásná Jizba, the commercial gallery of Družstevní Práce. Sudek’s work started to change during World War II, intentionally focusing on artistic photography. This is the period when he started to work on his series The Window of My Studio. Shortly after the war, Prague became the main subject of his photographs. In the 1960s Sudek started to reside on Úvoz street in Prague’s castle district, which became a meeting place for his friends, major Czech artists including painter Jan Zrzavý, architect Otto Rothmayer, and poet Jaroslav Seifert. In 1976 three retrospectives of Sudek’s photographs were held to mark his 80th birthday – in Prague, in Brno, and in Aachen, West Germany. Josef Sudek died of cancer the same year. Over the course of his lifetime he collected over 20,000 positives and over 50,000 negatives, which after his death were administered by art historian Anna Fárová. Dozens of publications about his work have been published around the world.

Confirmation of provenance enclosed.