This style was successful in merging modern technology with flowing organic forms reminiscent of the pre-industrial natural world.
Before World War I many young Czech artists travelled to Western Europe to study under proponents of Art Nouveau and to experience the charged environment of change.
Alfonse Mucha, a painter and photographer studied in Paris and produced quintessential Art Nouveau fine art, as well as commercial art in the form of stunning advertising posters. As many artists before and after him, Mucha used photography to aid in his paintings and prints.
Frantisek Drtikol was another Art Nouveau artist trained as a painter and photographer in Munich. Mucha and Drtikol brought back to Prague the fin de siècle view of modern art and incorporated technical proficiency and aesthetic fluidity into the work they produced in the early years of the 20th century.
In 1918, at the end of WWI, Czechoslovakia gained independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the post-war euphoria a new generation of Czech fine art photographers looked beyond its borders to forge links with the flourishing avant-garde and modernist movements of Art Nouveau, Dada and Surrealism in Western Europe. This new generation of photographers set the direction of modern photographic practices and trends between the wars and beyond.
It is on the shoulders of this first and celebrated generation of Czech photographers that all future generations must stand. The poetic document and surreal imagery of these pioneers are embedded in the work of such contemporary greats as Josef Koudelka, Jan Saudek, Jan Lukas, Ladislav Postupa and Vaclav Jirasek.
Even though each generation has their own unique vision, they must contend with the ideas and images of those that have gone before them prior to embarking on new horizons.
Frantisek Drtikol - Dancer Erwina Kupferova as Cleopatra
