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Original exhibition poster by Jan Svoboda. 55 x77 cm, in very good condition Jan Svoboda (1934 Bohunovice - 1990 Prague) became a legend of Czech photography during his lifetime. Less than fifteen years after his death, this legend has reached an almost Faustian dimension that begins to overshadow the work of its creator. Svoboda was the first among Josef Sudek's disciples, Svoboda a mystical worshipper of light and shadow, Svoboda a simple peasant who had been given over to urban life, Svoboda the only true "artist" among Czech photographers - all these statements and many others enclose the artist himself in black-and-white outlines and say little about the real scope and meaning of his work. Svoboda was perhaps the most obstinate of Czech photographers. It is a strange and wonderful experience to follow, from the very beginning, the originality and determination with which he embarked on a path that was his own and in which he logically had to remain true only to himself. "I have no programme, that's what's so terrible", he complained (perhaps with bitter satisfaction) in an interview with Liba Taylor in 1982. But it was he himself who established his own programme, in the form of a search for the autonomy of the photographic image. Svoboda's early work of the late 1950s already radically distinguished itself from the rising trends in art photography of the time and confidently set out to define the possibilities and limits of the photographic medium. Apart from the reminiscences of surrealism and symbolism (which influenced Svoboda throughout his life), the rendering of the subject in his early work betrays a totally different approach to the reality he represents. Here Svoboda was attempting to construct the photographic image in the same way that painting broke free from the mimetic canons and embarked on a modernist quest for the elementary rules of surface and composition. In his desire to achieve maximum autonomy for the photographic image, Svoboda pushed the limits of what was possible through fundamental and original formal innovations. Thanks to their sophisticated technique, his works were completely detached from the principle of reproducibility and thus became unique works of art (paradoxically for photography). Their solitary character was underlined by Svoboda, who was not yet accustomed to large formats, by the complete absence of framing, the use of a solid base with a supporting frame, the detachment of the works from the wall surface. The photographs are thus elevated to the status of objects that communicate autonomously both with the exhibition space and with the atmosphere of the lighting. Seller Inventory # 25449
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