World of the Soul

František
Drtikol, a prize-winning graduate of the Munich Photographic Institute,
established his own photography studio in Prague in 1910, garnering attention
in Czechoslovakia and abroad for his stylized portraits of writers and artists.
An early proponent of Pictorialism, he began to explore a variety of modernist
styles after World War I. In his photographs of nude women, jagged arrangements
of dynamic bodies, geometric props, and dramatic lighting reflect elements of
Constructivism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Art Deco. Drtikol’s abiding
fascination with the nude female form gained new dimensions when he started to
create paper and wood figures to photograph instead of live models about 1930.
Here, Drtikol simplifies the elongated female figure to its structural
equivalent, rhyming her shape with that of the tall vase at center, and
suspending her sideways along the sharp edges of the large abstract form.