Summer Palace, Royal Gardens, Prague

Dateca. 1972

Credit LineGift of Sarit Rozycki and Robert Cromwell

Dimensions9 3/8 x 11 7/8 in. (23.8 x 30.2 cm)

Object number2003.068.001

Label TextA review of Sudek's body of work discloses a succession of styles that seem to recapitulate the history of photography in the twentieth century. His earliest images from the 1920s were essays in softly focused Pictorialism. He then turned to the clarity of straight photography in studies that concentrated on the pure geometry of modern artifacts, and he began to document the sights of his beloved city of Prague in the same fashion. During World War II when he was isolated in his studio by the Nazi occupation, Sudek manifested a Surrealist strain in still lifes composed of disparate objects, fantastically juxtaposed. At the same time he discovered the rich tonal gradations of contact prints and never after used an enlarger. Following the war he once more began to photograph his city, wandering its public gardens to find scenes such as this, an Italian Renaissance-style palace screened through the buds of early spring, his favorite time of year. The overarching style that emerges is that of a realist with an intensely personal vision, one who portrayed his subjects enveloped in a poetic atmosphere.
Exhibition HistoryThe Objective Eye: Photographs from the Rozycki-Cromwell Collection, Michael C. Carlos Museum, August 10, 2005 - January 15, 2006
Published ReferencesMCCM Newsletter, March - May 2004.

ProvenanceEx coll. Sarit Rozycki and Robert Cromwell, United States.

MarkingsArtist stamp on verso of photograph.

Status

Not on view

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