Volume, Material and “Something Extra”: Sudek’s Passionate Observation of a Turning Point in Modern Czech Sculpture

Josef Sudek was a contemporary of several young artists who brought the avant-garde into the Czech art scene. Through his work on commission for the magazine Volné směry, he would become the go-to photographer for many members of the progressive SVU Mánes who sought reproductions of their work. Thus Sudek became increasingly involved in the contemporary Czech fine art scene of the period, and regular insight into newly-created works of art began to inform both his perspective and his originally rather conservative taste. Sudek’s friends, contemporaries and simultaneously his regular customers included two sculptors, Josef Wagner (1901–1957) and Hana Wichterlová (1903 –1990), both graduates of the studio of Jan Štursa at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Sudek’s remuneration was often in kind, as he collected artist’s work, including works by Wagner. In the case of Wichterlová, his neighbor from the area at the foot of Petřín Hill, his documentation of her work resulted in a revelation of new subject matter for his independent work – the sculptor’s garden. This personal connection with the artist that went well beyond the normal customer-client relationship would exert an influence on a number of photographic reproductions of individual works as well as greater artistic freedom in terms of actual commissions. Sudek’s manipulations of the photographed object suggest a quest for the inner essence of the statue “which is a living thing and must be photographed as a living thing.” Whereas with Wagner’s objects, Sudek tested their traditional and even conservative figural rendering through photography with a certain sense of urgency by means of repetition, and with an accent on intimacy in terms of portraiture, with the predominantly non-figural sculptures of Hana Wichterlová, Sudek took his photographic explorations all the way to superimposing layers of meaning within a freely-conceived photographic image.