Jaroslav Rössler : Abstract Photography

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Jaroslav Rössler
‘Komposition mit Apfel’
20.5 x 20 cm
photo
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Jaroslav Rössler
‘Ei mit Eiffelturm’
20.5 x 20 cm
photo
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Jaroslav Rössler
‘Bez názvu / Untitled’
20.5 x 20 cm
photo
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Jaroslav Rössler
‘Bez názvu / Untitled’
20.5 x 20 cm
photo
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Jaroslav Rössler
‘Zátiší s uzávěrem’
20.5 x 20 cm
photo
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Jaroslav Rössler
‘Surimprese jablka’
20.5 x 20 cm
photo
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Jaroslav Rössler
‘Kompozice s ozubeným kolem’
20.5 x 20 cm
photo
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‘Loď’
Jaroslav Rössler
20.5 x 20 cm
photo
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Jaroslav Rössler (1902–1990) was one of the most important Czech avant-garde photographers and his work from the first half of the 1920s ranked amongst the earliest and most radical examples of the application of Abstract and Constructivist principles to photography. Rössler started as an assistant to František Drtikol, but quickly abandoned the pictorial style of his renowned teacher and began to focus on minimalist details of actual objects and on geometric paper cut-outs, abstract compositions with shadow and light, inventive photomontages, and Constructivist shots of modern engineering and architecture. In 1923 he was invited to join Devětsil, and thus became the only photographer in the most famous Czech avant-garde group of artists and writers. During his Paris sojourn, 1927–35, he worked in several important studios, mainly making modern photographs for advertisements, while continuing to experiment freely on his own. Later, after a long hiatus, he returned to experimentation in the mid-1950s, and once again contributed to the latest artistic trends in a truly original way. Extract

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Jaroslav Rössler : Abstract Photography (1923 – 1978)

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Masahisa Fukase : “The Solitude of Ravens” (Photography)

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Masahisa Fukase is considered to be both a legend and an enigma in his native Japan. For a culture that is traditionally reluctant to expose emotion in public, the expressionistic character of his work was, in part, the result of the development of the generation that evolved after WWII. Fukase growing up in a decade in which mannered self-control was not the ideal civic behavior. This new perspective, coupled with the effects of war, exploded into the avant-garde scene in Tokyo. Inelegant printing techniques emerged and the manic style of photography that he shared with his contemporaries, such as Eikoh Hosoe, Daidoh Moriyama, and Shomei Tomatsu, reflected the “reaction to a world turned upside down.”

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“The Solitude of Ravens”
Gelatin silver print
Masahisa Fukase
16 x 20″
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“The Solitude of Ravens”
Gelatin silver print
Masahisa Fukase
16 x 20″
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“The Solitude of Ravens”
Gelatin silver print
Masahisa Fukase
16 x 20″
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“The Solitude of Ravens”
Gelatin silver print
Masahisa Fukase
16 x 20″
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“The Solitude of Ravens”
Gelatin silver print
Masahisa Fukase
16 x 20″
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“The Solitude of Ravens”
Gelatin silver print
Masahisa Fukase
16 x 20″
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“The Solitude of Ravens”
Gelatin silver print
Masahisa Fukase
16 x 20″
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“The Solitude of Ravens”
Gelatin silver print
Masahisa Fukase
16 x 20″
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“The Solitude of Ravens”
Gelatin silver print
Masahisa Fukase
16 x 20″
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Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase’s expressionist photo series on the species of ravens represents a ten-year-obsession with the dark-edged worlds of ravens, shot on annual trips from Tokyo to Hokkaido, Fukase’s birthplace. Clearly the omen of misfortune, that has been traditionally assigned to ravens in almost all cultures, reigns over the sombre photographs taken. These display isolated or massive groupings of ravens, variously appearing at night or by day throughout a diverse Japanese landscape. Sitting on telephone poles, at the beach or on the edges of villages, the ravens’ immutable and terrifying presence permeates these photographs with signs of potential, impending or sure loss. The darkened nature of the pictures might not be coincidental regarding that they were taken in a period of personal pain and suffering after the photographer’s divorce in 1976. Fukase’s works are part of the Japanese new photography that is wrenched into different forms based on the spirit of personal experience and contrasting the earlier ideal of mannered self-control [Extract : Artnet]

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Masahisa Fukase : Wirtz Gallery

Masahisa Fukase : Robert Mann Gallery

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Antoni Tàpies : ‘Color Lithographs’ (Artworks)

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“My wish is that we might progressively lose our confidence in what we think we
believe and the things we consider stable and secure, in order to remind ourselves
of the infinite number of things still waiting to be discovered…” – [Antoni Tapies]

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‘8 sobre llibre’
Color lithograph
Antoni Tàpies
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‘Untitled’
Color lithograph
Antoni Tàpies
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‘Untitled’
Color lithograph
Antoni Tàpies
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‘Envoltorio’
Color lithograph
Antoni Tàpies
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‘Lettre X’
Color lithograph
Antoni Tàpies
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‘Etiquette’
Color lithograph
Antoni Tàpies
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‘Divisé’
Color lithograph
Antoni Tàpies
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Tàpies shared a general sensibility which affected artists on both sides of the Atlantic after the Second World War and the dropping of the atomic bomb, and soon expressed an interest in matter – earth, dust, atoms and particles – which took the shape of the use of materials foreign to academic artistic expression and experiments with new techniques. He believes that the notion of matter must also be understood from the point of view of Medieval mysticism as magic, mimesis and alchemy. That is how we must see his wish for his works to have the power to transform our inner selves.

The works of the last years are, most of all, a reflection on pain – both physical and spiritual – understood as an integral part of life. Influenced by Buddhist thought, Tàpies believes that a better knowledge of pain allows us to soften its effects and therefore improve our quality of life. The passage of time, which has always been a constant in his work, now takes on fresh nuances when lived as a personal experience which brings greater self-knowledge and a clearer understanding of the world.

He’s consolidated an artistic language which visually conveys both his conception of art and certain philosophical concerns which have been renewed over the years. His practice is still open to the brutality of the present while offering a form which, despite its ductility, remains faithful to its origins. So the works of the last few years aren’t only fully contemporary, they’re also a record of his own past.

[Extract : Antoni Tàpies Collection]

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Antoni Tàpies Collection : Selected Works

Antoni Tàpies : Spaightwood Galleries

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Fernand Léger : Paintings

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“Enormous enlargements of an object or a fragment give it a personality it never had before,
and in this way, it can become a vehicle of entirely new lyric and plastic power.” Fernand Léger

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“The women and children”
Fernand Léger
Oil on Canvas

“The great tug”
Fernand Léger
Oil on Canvas

“The bridge of the tug”
Fernand Léger
Oil on Canvas

“The tug”
Fernand Léger
Oil on Canvas

“The disks in the city”
Fernand Léger
Oil on Canvas

“Women in an Interior”
Fernand Léger
Oil on Canvas

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Fernand Léger initially trained as an architect. He was part of the avant garde circle of artists working in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. Prior to the First World War, his work was strongly influenced by Cubism. He also shared Futurism’s fascination with technology, machinery and the increased speed with which modern life was being lived. Léger developed his own style by combining elements of both movements. His paintings centred on powerful contrasts of forms and although his subjects were often abstracted, fractured and seen from multiple viewpoints, they always remained visually legible. His paintings highlighted the volumetric qualities of objects by simplifying forms into tubular structures and reducing colours to monochromes, primaries and secondaries. Léger’s intention was to conjure up the intense and unsettling experience of modern life itself with the visual dissonance of his colour contrasts. He wanted his art to have a similar physical effect to speed and noise. [i-map]

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Fernand Léger : Tate

Fernand Léger : Artworks

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Antoni Tàpies : Artist

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“to remind man of what in reality he is, to give him a theme for reflection, to shock him in order to
rescue him from the madness of inauthenticity and to lead him to self-discovery.” Antoni Tàpies

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Repliquer III
Antoni Tàpies
Colour etching
1981
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Untitled
Antoni Tàpies
Colour etching
1986
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Antoni Tàpies
Nobody is a nobody
Colour etching
1979
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Antoni Tàpies
Negre sobre vermell
ink and collage on paper
2008
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Antoni Tàpies
Affiche avant lettre
Color lithograph
1990
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Tàpies shared a general sensibility which affected artists on both sides of the Atlantic after the Second World War and the dropping of the atomic bomb, and soon expressed an interest in matter – earth, dust, atoms and particles – which took the shape of the use of materials foreign to academic artistic expression and experiments with new techniques. He believes that the notion of matter must also be understood from the point of view of Medieval mysticism as magic, mimesis and alchemy. That is how we must see his wish for his works to have the power to transform our inner selves.

The works of the last years are, most of all, a reflection on pain – both physical and spiritual – understood as an integral part of life. Influenced by Buddhist thought, Tàpies believes that a better knowledge of pain allows us to soften its effects and therefore improve our quality of life. The passage of time, which has always been a constant in his work, now takes on fresh nuances when lived as a personal experience which brings greater self-knowledge and a clearer understanding of the world.

In recent years he has consolidated an artistic language which visually conveys both his conception of art and certain philosophical concerns which have been renewed over the years. His artistic practice is still open to the brutality of the present while offering a form which, despite its ductility, remains faithful to its origins. And so the works of the last few years are not only fully contemporary, they are also a record of his own past. [Extract : Antoni Tàpies Collection]

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Antoni Tàpies Collection : Selected Works

Antoni Tàpies : Spaightwood Galleries

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Hans Richter : Rhythmus 23 (1923)

“Rhythmus 23 is constructed entirely out of the interplay between square shapes and diagonal lines,
often related via superimposition, and the underlying architectonic principle is geometric symmetry”. RS

Hans Richter: Rhythmus 23 (1923)
16mm, black and white, sound, 2.5 min
Music Track : The Soft Moon “Parallels”

The cinematic avant-garde that emerged after World War I originated in Germany. Composed almost exclusively of modern painters and photographers, the international experimental film movement mounted a sustained effort to extend the formal strategies of the various strands of post-war modernism to the cinema. In deliberate opposition to the naturalizing, indexical tendencies of the popular cinema, the highly reflexive films of the first avant-garde emphasized the medium-specific properties of cinema by drawing attention to its capacity for spatio-temporal transformation. The focus was on the nature, properties and functions of the camera, film strip and screen, rather than on human actors or narrative flow. It is, therefore, highly appropriate that the films that inaugurated the movement were all works of abstract animation, an area in which German artists made a decisive contribution. Foremost among these early pioneers was Hans Richter, who, as a participant in most of the major art movements of the inter-war period and as a director, educator, theorist and cine-activist for more than four decades, played a pivotal role in the development of the avant-garde film.

[Extract : Senses of Cinema : Text Richard Suchenski]

Hans Richter : UBUWEB