André Kertész Hungarian, 1894-1985

A seminal figure in 20th century photography, André Kertész’s ability to construct lyrical images, infused with wit and insight, would remain a constant throughout his long career. Neither a surrealist nor a strict photojournalist, he combined a street photographer’s wry humor and eye for the decisive moment with the formal aesthetic of a modernist in his black-and-white photographs. Kertész celebrated the direct observation of the everyday, recording both his fascination with Parisian urban life and an overlapping feeling of alienation while meandering in the streets of New York City. Valuing abstraction as well, Kertész’s 1933 book, Distortions, featured a series of surreal photographs of human nudes distorted through the use of mirrors.

Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1894, Kertész got his first camera in 1912. Shooting auto-didactically in his free time, Kertész spent the next couple years working at the Budapest Stock Exchange and serving in the Austro-Hungarian army. Seeking to fulfill his artistic dreams he moved to Paris in 1925, where he established himself as a successful photojournalist, working alongside major figures such as Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, and Constantin Brâncuşi. Kertész relocated to New York in 1936 to further his career, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that he became once more a major figure in the fine art photography world. Recognized for his contribution to photographic composition and the photo-essay by the time he passed away in 1985, Kertész’s work had been honored with numerous awards and solo exhibitions worldwide.

Beginning in the 1920s, Kertész’s photography would go on to be shown in numerous institutions such as the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, London; International Center for Photography, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Bibliothèque National, Paris; The Getty Center, Los Angeles; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Despite being the focus of a major retrospective in 1964, André Kertész, Photographer, curated by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Kertész — whose commercial American career had faded by the 1960s— felt under appreciated by the art community and critics. The exhibition issued a revival for the artist however, re-establishing the pioneering reputation he had held in Europe and in 1965 Kertész was named an honorary member of the American Society for Magazine Photographers.

Permanent collections which hold works by Kertész include the Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Getty Center, Los Angeles; International Center for Photography, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain; National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, Japan; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Kertész has more than twenty books published in his name, amongst them On Reading (2008), André Kertész: His Life and Work (1994), Kertész on Kertész: A Self-Portrait (1985), Washington Square (1975) and J’aime Paris: Photographs Since the Twenties (1974).