The first major exhibition of photographer Jaromír Funke’s work outside of Europe in nearly 25 years is on view at the National Gallery of Art through August 9.
Some 70 works in “Jaromír Funke and the Amateur Avant-Garde” reveal his influential role in the Czech and Slovak amateur photography movement in the 1920s and 1930s and includes works by Czech photographer Josef Sudek (1896‱976) and Eugen Wiaūovský (1888‱964).
“The exhibition places Jaromír Funke’s career at the center of an important, if often overlooked, history of amateur photography that developed quickly in central Europe between the wars,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. “The gallery is the only venue for this thought-provoking exhibition with important works from our collection joined by generous loans from public and private collections.”
“Jaromír Funke and the Amateur Avant-Garde” traces the careers of Funke and his compatriots and reveals how their photographs bridged the aesthetics of the amateur mainstream and the experimental styles of the avant-garde.
From the early 1920s and the 1930s †when avant-garde photography became more widespread in Czech culture †to photographs made during World War II, these visionaries followed the path of the committed amateur. They exhibited or published their own prints and shared knowledge of photography, but did not make a commercial or artistic living from it.
The first room of the exhibition includes works that established Funke as a world-class artist, such as photographs from the first nationwide amateur photography salon: untitled (Bridge in Kolín), 1922 and “Staircase in Old Prague,” circa 1922. Rarely exhibited during his career and on view together for the first time in a significant number, darkroom works, including “Spiral,” 1924, and “Abstract Photo,” 1927‱929, make a statement about the mystery of photography.
Throughout the 1930s, amateur modernist photography blossomed in Czechoslovakia. Eugen Wiaūovský, a close friend of Funke who wrote theoretical articles on photography, made tightly framed yet emotionally expansive compositions. Several recently discovered exhibition prints by Wiaūovský, such as “Insulator,” 1932, and “Portrait,” 1935, are in the exhibit.
Classroom studies by several of Funke’s pupils and similarly conceived compositions by Jindrich Koch (1896‱934), who taught photography at a sister school to the Bauhaus in Halle, Germany, are paired in the exhibition. They include “Study with a Cone,” 1932, by MiloaĠDohnány (1904‱944) and untitled (Textile Study), 1930, by Koch.
The National Gallery of Art owns an important suite of portfolios on Czech cathedrals from Funke’s late career; examples from one of these, on the gothic St Vitus cathedral in Prague, are on view. They are presented with rare photographs of St Vitus taken in 1945 by Funke’s contemporary Jirí Jenícek (1895‱963). The studies are part of a set of 72 photographs, owned by the National Gallery as well, that were intended for a book on the great cathedral.
The last room of the exhibition explores Funke’s career from the late 1930s through the final weeks of World War II, when the artist suddenly died. Landscape photographs by Funke from Subcarpathian Ruthenia and an example of his related series, “The Unsated Earth,” 1940‱944, a mournful reflection on the disappearance of humanity into a blood-soaked soil during Word War II, are showcased.
The exhibition curator is Matthew Witkovsky, curator and chair, department of photography, The Art Institute of Chicago, and former associate curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art.
The National Gallery is on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW. For more information, www.nga.gov or 202-737-4215.
