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Dimensions: measurements note 6 1/8 by 7 3/8 in. (15.6 by 18.7 cm.)
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Provenance: The photographer to Susan Harder, New York, as agentAcquired from the above by a private collection, New York, 1983Acquired from the above by Edwynn Houk Gallery, Chicago, 1987Acquired by the Quillan Company from the above, 1989
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Literature: Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 9 (this print)Other prints of this image:Sandra Phillips, David Travis, and Weston J. Naef, André Kertész: Of Paris and New York (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1985, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 136Sarah Greenough, Robert Gurbo, and Sarah Kennel, André Kertész (National Gallery of Art, Washington, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2005, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 51André Kertész and Avant Garde Photography of the Twenties and Thirties (London: Annely Juda Fine Arts, 1999, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 46Jane Corkin, A Lifetime of Perception (New York, 1982), p. 127Susan Harder and Hiroji Kubota, eds., André Kertész: Diary of Light (New York, 1987), pl. 71Pierre Borhan, André Kertész, His Life and Work (Boston, 1994, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 174André Kertész (Paris: Centre d'Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou, 1977), unpaginatedRobert Enright, Stranger to Paris: Au Sacre du Printemps Gallerie, 1927 (Toronto: Jane Corkin Gallery, 1992, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 55Nicholas Durcot, ed., André Kertész: Sixty Years of Photography, 1912-1972 (New York, 1972), p. 116David Travis, Photographs from the Julien Levy Collection, Starting with Atget (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1976, in conjunction with the exhibition), rear coverPierre Bonhomme, Patrimoine Photographique (Paris, 1999), p. 326
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Notes: Nature Morte Chez Mondrian belongs to a small group of domestic still life studies, all taken by Kertész in the mid-1920s, that suffuse the ordinary objects of daily life with poetry and mystery. Taken in the studio of Piet Mondrian, the image is an inventive portrait of the painter, much in the same way that Berenice Abbott's photograph of Jean Cocteau's hands (Lot 45) serves as an enigmatic portrait of Cocteau. Kertész met Mondrian in 1926, and made not only a traditional portrait of the artist, but also a number of photographs in his studio. It is these studies in the studio that we remember--the artist's bed and easel, the pipe and glasses offered here, the single tulip on a table near the stairs. In one of the earliest critical assessments of Kertész's work, Florent Fels described Kertész as 'un prestigieux créateur de poèmes, et ses métaphores sont d'humbles objets' (L'Art vivant, Volume 4, Number 20, 1 June 1928, p. 417). Nature Morte Chez Mondrian occupies an important place in Kertész's early exhibition history. It was shown in his first significant one-person exhibition in 1927, at the Au Sacre du Printemps gallery; at the Galerie L'Epoque, Brussels, in 1928; in Essen, at the Fotographie der Gegenwart, 1929; and at the prestigious Film und Foto in Stuttgart that same year. Julien Levy may have included it in one of his pioneering exhibitions in New York in 1932 or 1937. Always recognized as an important work within the photographer's oeuvre, it became one of the first Kertész images to enter a museum collection when a print of it was purchased by the König Albert Museum in Zwickau (cf. Of Paris and New York, entries for cat. nos. 21 and 63). The print of the image offered here has on its reverse the stamp of Kertész's earliest Paris studio, at 5, Rue de Vanves. This lot is accompanied by a typed letter, signed by Kertész in ink, which was given to the private collector who acquired the photograph from Kertész in 1983. The letter confirms the photograph's printing date and its history.
