J. Paul Getty Museum
Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles
310-440-7300
The Getty Center
André Kertész Photographs: Seven Decades
Dec. 18, 2007-
April 13, 2008

Have confidence in the inventions and transformations of chance.

— André Kertész, 1930

André Kertész Photographs: Seven Decades celebrates the quality and diversity of André Kertész’s long career in photography. One of the most original photographers of the 20th century, Kertész often created unexpected compositions from everyday subjects. Proclaiming himself a “naturalist Surrealist,” his instinct for using the camera to reveal the unexpected in the commonplace is evident throughout his photographic life. “Kertész had a unique ability to surprise us with the ordinary” says Karen Hellman, who curated the exhibition and serves as assistant curator in the Department of Photographs.

The exhibition comprises approximately 55 prints drawn from the Getty’s collection that the artist made in Hungary, France, and the United States, where he lived for 40 years. Selected from more than 170 Kertész photographs in the Getty Museum’s collection, the presentation touches upon the incredible range of subjects in the photographer’s seven-decade career, from still life arrangements to street scenes, portraits to cityscapes of Paris and New York.

Organized chronologically and geographically, the exhibition begins in Hungary, where Kertész was born in 1894. It then moves to rare small prints made in Paris, where he emigrated in 1925 to pursue his chosen path as a photographer, and where he developed his signature style. The final section presents photographs made in New York where he lived and worked from 1936 until his death in 1985 at the age of 91.

The core of the exhibition consists of rare prints made about the same time as the
negatives, a particular strength of the Getty Museum’s Kertész holdings. Rarely seen images such as Clochards [Vagrants] on the Quai, 1925, as well as his early vintage prints such as The Dancing Faun, 1919, and late Polaroids, including Self-Portrait in the Artist’s Studio, New York, 1984, will be on view.

Embraced by the artistic community, Kertész became one of the leading artist-photographers of his day influencing such photographers as Brassaï, Robert Capa, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. “Kertész was loved and admired as a ‘photographer’s photographer,’” says Weston Naef, curator of the Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs. “During his 70-plus year career, he created some of the most acclaimed photographs of the 20th century and we are fortunate to have a wide selection of his work in the collection.”