From the essay by Daniela Mrázková:
“The creative career of František Drtikol began with the new century, a time when commercial photography in Bohemia was already blossoming, amateur clubs called to life and exhibitions held there and abroad. Amidst all this activity, however, was nothing that strove particularly beyond the average. Drtikol’s is the first name representing a personality whose importance is comparable to that of Robert Demachy in France or Alfred Stieglitz in America. Drtikol followed, in the beginning, the pictorialist endeavors of the day: he excelled in such techniques as carbon, gum, pigment and bromoil printing, which could bring photography closer to painting or graphic art; he followed the laws of classical picture composition. He gradually gave, however, a free rein to a pure photographic vision which worked with light as the basic expressive means.”
This catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition with the same title held at Galerie Rudolf Kicken, Cologne, Oct. 27 – Nov. 30, 1983, and at Robert Miller Gallery, New York, in 1984.
