André KertészAmerican, 1894–1985Untitled (Distortion #6)
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Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
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- The museum's own collection data
About the work
André Kertész arrived in Paris from Hungary in 1925. His timing as a photographer was fortunate: within a couple of years, new French magazines such as Vu, Voilà, and Regards were gaining a wide audience, and they turned to Kertész— along with Germaine Krull, Man Ray, Eli Lotar, and Brassai, among others—to fill their pages. Kertész made some of his most influential images while on assignment for these magazines, including a series of nudes commissioned by the racy Le Sourire in 1933. The photographer posed his models in front of funhouse mirrors like those in Paris’s Luna Park amusement grounds. He employed three mirrors and two women (one older, one younger), making almost two hundred images in sessions he later described as “absolute fun.” Twelve images appeared in the magazine—a series as unsettling as it was seductive.
Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1987.362.9
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago: the museum's own open data · fetched 7 days ago
- Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder
Meanwhile, in the life of André Kertész
The whole life1925–1936
The circle of Hungarian émigrés and portraits of friends
In Paris he is among numerous Hungarian artists, including François Kollar, Robert Capa, Emeric Fehér, Brassaï and Julia Bathory, as well as Man Ray, Germaine Krull and Lucien Aigner, who also emigrated there, and becomes involved with the Dada movement; visiting his sculptor friends, he is fascinated by Cubism. He makes photo portraits of the painters Piet Mondrian and Marc Chagall, the writer Colette and the film-maker Sergei Eisenstein.
1930
A silver medal at the Exposition Coloniale
At the Exposition Coloniale in Paris he is awarded a silver medal for services to photography.
1931
Elizabeth joins him in Paris
He had gone back to Hungary in 1930 to visit his family, and after his return to Paris Elizabeth follows him in 1931, despite opposition from her family; she had stayed behind until her future husband was well enough established in Paris for them to marry. Elizabeth and André remain together for the rest of their lives.
1932
Exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York
At the Julien Levy Gallery in New York the price of his proofs is set at US$20, a large sum of money during the Great Depression.
17 June 1933
Marries Elizabeth
Despite his mother’s death earlier that year, Kertész marries Elizabeth; he is said to have spent less time with his artist friends in favour of his new wife.
1933–1937
Books: “Enfants”, “Paris”, “Nos amies les bêtes”
His first personal book of photographs, Enfants, is published in 1933, and he publishes regularly in the following years: Paris (1934), dedicated to his brothers Imre and Jenő, Nos Amies les bêtes (“Our Friends the Animals”, 1936) and Les Cathédrales du vin (“The Cathedrals of Wine”, 1937).
