RUDOLPH KOPPITZ (1884-1936)
Bewegungsstudie (Movement Study No. 1), 1925
gelatin silver print
titled in pencil (on the verso)
17¾ x 13¼in. (45.1 x 33.7cm.)
RUDOLPH KOPPITZ (1884-1936)
Bewegungsstudie (Movement Study No. 1), 1925
gelatin silver print
titled in pencil (on the verso)
17¾ x 13¼in. (45.1 x 33.7cm.)
Manfred Heiting collection;
David Tunkl collection;
Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York;
acquired 2001.
Conklin and Farber, Rudolf Koppitz 1884-1936, Christian Brandstätter, 1995, cover, pp. 64 (on cover of the magazine Photosport, 1929), 71 and 83.
'Bewegungsstudie' (Movement Study) is surely the most widely published and best known image in Austrian photography from the early decades of the last century. This is for good reason, as no photograph better captures the cultural strands that characterised the Austrian avant-garde at that time. Here one can see a graphic strength and compositional clarity that reflects the modernist ambitions initiated in the fine as in the applied arts by the Secession and by the Wiener Werkstätte. But what gives the image its power is the aura of mystery, of symbolist sensuality that resonates through this enigmatic grouping of the three uniformly coiffed and draped figures and the one single naked figure.
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