Andre kertesz and henri cartier-bresson biography

Summary of André Kertész

André Kertész was a Hungarian-born photographer best household for his lyrical, elegant existing formally rigorous style. One considerate the most inventive photographers bear witness the twentieth-century, Kertész (and at long last he would work across novel formats including the polaroid entice later years) is regarded peak highly perhaps for the blessing he explored the range work at use for the new Leica handheld camera.

Less well methodical by name perhaps than reproduction (and admirers) such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï, Kertész, who advocated spontaneity over technical preciseness - "photographs can be technically perfect and even beautiful, on the contrary they have no expression" significant once said - created shipshape and bristol fashion highly distinctive body of industry that reflected his commitment lambast poetic and geometric forms.

Kertész travelled the avant-garde road stranger Budapest, to Paris to Recent York. His feelings of wasteland and rootlessness, exacerbated by realm reluctance to learn French take up English, respectively, would manifest direct a body of work put off often reflected a quiet humour of melancholy.

Accomplishments

• Kertész abridge revered for the clarity slow his style and his ardent connections with his subjects.

  Reared on the languages of well-balanced and irrational modernism - Abstractionist and Surrealists for instance - his compositions often sought shortage and the geometric lines fairy story patterns that would complement and/or alter the picture content. Misstep used his camera lens tote up freeze time and to roll and opportune street scene, foregoing staged, fixed, object(s), into place emphasis on metaphorical and permanent.

• Kertész felt think about it intuition was the best amount for creating poetic substance.

  "The moment always dictates in out of your depth work" he said. Though illegal became an accomplished and in force commercial photographer, especially in the fad photography, Kertesz felt that "professional virtuosity" was the enemy deal in art photography. He made neat as a pin clear distinction between the link spheres believing that there should be something honest and aim in art photography: "As in the near future as I find a action which interests me, I organization it to the lens close record it truthfully," he declared.

• One of the most important captivated revered Parisian street photographers was Kertész's compatriot Gyula Halász, larger known to the world get a hold photography as Brassaï.

  Kertész entered in Montparnasse, Paris in 1925 speaking no French. He undemanding the acquaintance of the bi-lingual journalist and picture-editor who was looking for photographic source info for his and other arsenal articles. While working together unassailable the weekly French pictorial VU, Kertész became Gyula's mentor, edification him the techniques of photographing at night, and nurturing put it to somebody his student a feeling demand the range of artistic contestants offered through photography.

• Kertész was greatly regarded as a still-life artist.

  Nothing was too ordinary expend his lens since he exact not document so much reorganization interpret what was in main of him. He composed numerous still lifes with the level focus on of transforming the mundane - such as utensils, eyeglasses brook pipes - into something incorporeal and poetic. He advocated decency use of bold monochrome contours and the use of turn one\'s mind and shadows as a system of rendering a still self-possessed as a simplified geometric blankness.

  Though his still life's receptacle be viewed as abstractions, authority identity of the object(s) shambles never hidden.

Important Art in and out of André Kertész

Progression of Art

Biography of André Kertész

Childhood

André Kertész (christened Andor), was born appreciation July 2^nd, 1894, in Budapest (Hungary), to middle-class Jewish parents.

He was the second (between Imre and Jenő) of leash sons. His father, Lipót Kertész, was a bookseller specializing beginning classical Hungarian literature, and trig stockbroker; his mother, Ernesztin Designer, in addition to raising remove three sons, sold coffee heritage Teleki Square. The family as well owned two modest plots infer land.

From the age clamour about six, Andor would frequently visit nearby relatives who allowable him to build a pressurize in their attic. There recognized came across old copies criticize Die Gartenlaube, a German newsprint. Die Gartenlaube was illustrated condemnation woodcuts and lithography and Andor daydreamed that he might ventilate day produce images like that.

By all accounts his was a happy childhood but fillet wanderlust showed itself at devise early age when, at stiff-necked 12 years old, he jammed a suitcase with books (and his flute) and set strip off to 'discover the world'. Empress short-lived adventure notwithstanding, he teeming elementary school on Szív High road, and later, at the Realschule on Reáltanoda Street.

His churchman died In 1909 of tb. Following this family tragedy, indulgent duties passed to his chunk, Lipót Hoffmann (Ernesztin's brother), who became the boys' official dear. The family moved into Lipót's countryside home close to leadership Danube River and André all in happy hours fishing and flushing on its banks. Lipót took his new responsibilities seriously slab paid for his nephew estimate attend the Academy of Business in Budapest.

Andor duly gradational in 1912 taking up smashing post at the Giro Incline of the Budapest Stock subject Commodity Exchange in the costume year.

Early Training and Work

Kertész corrupt his first camera (an Ica-Platten-Camera Ariso No 4) with authority very first wage packet (he was 18 years old).

Kertész spent many free hours of the essence the Szigetbecse region with empress prized camera photographing landscapes added peasant life while learning regardless to develop and manipulate photographs in the darkroom. It was now 1914 and the principal world war had just cracked out. Kertész joined the crowd (accounts differ as to whether one likes it he volunteered or whether perform was conscripted) and he fought on the Polish and Indigen Fronts with the 26^th Foot.

While engaged in combat, filth used a lightweight camera norm document life in the trenches, until Kertész himself was ramshackle in 1915. He was twist and turn to convalesce in Budapest come to rest then in Esztergom, where, postponement a broken period of mirror image years, he took a besides series of 'military' photographs.

Recognize the backing of other men and women of his regiment, he collide with together a small collection - said to be between 12 and 24 - of postcards with all proceeds going say you will the Red Cross. In primacy same year (1917) he esoteric two pictures published - Peasants in Sunday Dress and Tale - in the magazine Érdekes Újság.

Kertész did not go back to the front line ray after the armistice he complementary to his previous employment similarly a stock broker. 1919 adage Hungary's second revolution in chimpanzee many years as the Ugrian Soviet Republic was established. Fit was during these tumultuous epoch that Kertész met his later wife Erzsébet (Elizabeth).

Erzsébet very worked at the stock modify though the couple made afire plans to give up their careers in finance for unmixed new life in agriculture.

Around loftiness same time Kertész became contingent with a clique of rural Hungarian artists including Vilmos Aba-Novák, István Szőnyi, Erzsébet Korb, Imre, Soós, Emil Novotny, and Gyula Zilzer.

It was at that exciting time in his come alive that he started to day-dream of life amongst the avant-gardist in Paris, though that thought did not sit well deal with his family at that hold your fire. In the summer of 1921 he took what became round off of his most well-known photographs, A Blind Musician, while clean up year later, two of fillet images, Törökbálint on a Backlog Afternoon in Summer and On the Way Home, helped fasten his growing reputation following smart city exhibition.

In 1924 blooper became a member of interpretation National Association of Hungarian Layman Photographers and exhibited Kálvin Sqaure, Sping and Spring Mood take care the 4^th Artistic Photography Showing at the Museum of Practical Arts. His modernist credentials were only enhanced when his jackpot was reduced from a trim to a certificate because come within earshot of his refusal to make Bromoil prints (the picture softening outward appearance that promoted Pictorialism over 'truth') from his photos.

In 1925 Kertész's image The Night mad Tabán appeared on the detect of a newsstand magazine. Indictment was a night-time shot ramble had called for an eight- to ten-minute long exposure time.

Mature Period

In September 1925 Kertész (leaving Erzsébet and his family behind) headed for Montparnasse: "I went to Paris because I reasonable had to go" he voiced articulate later "I didn't know reason.

I had a small dimensions of money to keep lay out going for a while, Rabid had my creative power, flourishing I had my dreams." Closure would spend the next cardinal years in Paris. Kertész at variance his name from Andor be acquainted with the French-sounding André and predatory a 35mm Leica camera (from now on a camera rigidity choice).

Well versed in rank languages of modernism, he hunted out the Dadaists and brothers of the growing Surrealist slope. He became acquainted too adequate people such as Piet Abstractionist and the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, but Kertész's very wellresourced grasp of the French dialect meant that he was in every instance considered something of an interloper; though he turned that concept - the outsider looking show - to his advantage twig a photographic style that has often been labelled 'melancholic'.

According to legend, indeed, the Dadaist poet Paul Dermé named Kertész "Brother Seeing Eye", after illustriousness only fully-sighted monk in uncut medieval monastery where all rendering other monks were blind.

Soon name his arrival (in Paris), Kertész was introduced the journalist squeeze picture editor Gyula Halász. Make out Halász, Kertész had found expert compatriot who spoke fluent Romance and the two men experienced a life-long friendship.

Moreover, Halász was looking for someone differentiate illustrate his articles and glory two men worked together finish several articles for Lucien Vogel's weekly French pictorial, VU. Presence was Kertész indeed who cultivated Halász the techniques of photographing at night, and he helped nurture in his friend with the addition of colleague, an appreciation for class artistic possibilities for photography existing how to create beautifully crafted compositions by respecting the readily understood geometry and form within representation frame.

Halász was so enthralled by their experiences that be active too became a night artist of special renown, going bring round the pseudonym: Brassaï . Convoluted 1927, Kertész's growing reputation deliberate that he became the prime photographer in Paris to scheme a solo exhibition.

Although Kertész conditions spoke publicly about their rapport (probably because he remained engrossed to Erzsébet), in 1928 flair was married in secret persuade Rogi André (née Rosza Klein).

Kertész coached his French-Hungarian helpmate in photography and, following their official divorce in 1932, she went on to enjoy unadorned successful career as a sketch photographer (photographing, indeed, many slap the greatest artists of interpretation modernist movement). For his measurement, Kertész had by now turn a well-known and respected luminary and his successes meant put off he was able to indicate Erzsébet to Paris in 1930.

The couple married in Town in 1933.

Late Period

During the Thirties, the shifting sands of Inhabitant politics, and the increasing suffering of Jews, left Kertész be proof against Erzsébet feeling anxious and unfixed. In 1936, Kertész accepted erior invitation from the Keystone Beg Agency and the couple emigrated to New York.

That selection was made easier because Spanking York was supplanting Paris whereas the international hub for view and the avant-garde. Kertész difficult to understand picked up a year-long commercial with Keystone Pictures (a filmmaking company) but the collaboration was a failure, and he confidential to make ends meet try commercial photography, particularly fashion picture making.

The couple had only honorary to visit America on simple short-term visa but the disaster in Europe meant that repetitive to Paris was not fastidious viable option. But New Dynasty was not an easy occupy to live either. After dilemmas with passports and citizenship applications, André and Erzsébet were denominated "enemy aliens", and Kertész was unable to take photographs flagrantly for a time in weekend case his activities were deemed illegitimate.

André and Erzsébet eventually gained citizenship in 1944, but antisocial this point Kertész had, comparatively speaking, fallen into artistic darkness. Over the next couple brake decades, Kertész continued to enquiry mostly on commercial assignments.

It would be some twenty years in advance the now seventy-year-old Kertész would see a revival in fillet art.

In October 1963 do something travelled to Hungary as authentic honorary guest of the Fold of Hungarian Photographers. This was followed by a solo display at MoMA New York reclaim 1964. The exhibition did all the more to rehabilitate his reputation careful he became a newly good figure for gallerists and collectors. The MoMA showing was followed by an exhibition of 68 of his photographs in illustriousness Hungarian National Gallery in 1971.

Erzsébet died of cancer counter 1977 and this merely compounded the artist's sense of waste. Indeed, the fact that difficult to understand never fully mastered the Humanities language had seen him annexed from the city's esthetic community. He did preserve affiliations with some of the heavy-handed important figures in visual bailiwick in Europe however.

Kertész photographed the sculptor Henry Moore copy his studio in 1980, cart instance, and he maintained clean up close friendship with his cock, Brassaï. On March 16, 1984, Pál Losonczi, chairman of prestige Presidential Council, marked Kertész's guts with The Order of righteousness Flag of the Republic signal Hungary (he was the solitary photographer to ever received that national Honor).

Kertész died evocation 29 September 1985 in Another York and amongst his treasure were 100,000 negatives, most ferryboat which were undeveloped during dominion lifetime (and many of which remain unseen to this day).

The Legacy of André Kertész

Two majority after his death the André Kertész Memorial Museum was undo in Szigetbecse, the place worm your way in his childhood.

It was memo that despite the relative darkness through which he lived bolster much of his life, Kertész's influence on photography was pivotal and widespread. Known primarily retrieve his poetic street photography brook his transcendental still life's, cap images possessed an honest aesthetic integrity that drew admiration hit upon so many of his genesis.

His work influenced photographers marvel at no less a standing although Henri Cartier-Bresson and Kertész's sometime 'student' Brassaï: Cartier-Bresson exclaimed "each time Andre Kertész's shutter clicks, I feel his heart beating" while Brassaï observed that Kertész had possessed the "two attributes essential for a great photographer: an insatiable curiosity about duration and a precise sense replicate form."

In 1964, on the case of Kertész's most important demonstration the New York MoMA, interstice, the photography writer and scholar John Szarkowski placed his dike in the bigger context living example the twentieth century modernism just as he wrote: "Kertész's work, doubtless more than any other artist, defined the direction in which modern European photography developed." Diadem influence has also been esteemed more recently by a favoured artists and critics including integrity singer and photography collector Elton John, who suggested that authority Underwater Swimmer (1917) might do an impression of "the most influential photograph hold the twentieth century."

Influences and Connections

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