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Piet Mondrian, Paris (93.XM.21.1)

Creator

American Photographer · 1894–1985

subject of work

> [T]he moment always dictates in my work....Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see...I see a situation and I know that it's right. > > --André Kertész André Kertész bought his first camera and made his first photograph while working as a clerk at the Budapest stock exchange in 1912. After years of amateur snapshot photography in his native Hungary, he moved to Paris in 1925 and began

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Date: 1926
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Culture: American
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

> André Kertész first visited the studio of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) in 1926 and commenced a series of photographs representing his artist friends and their studio environments (see [84.XM.193.73](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/55805/andre-kertesz-pierre-demaria-paris-american-1929/); [85. XM.259.11](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/55838/andre-kertesz-studio-of-jean-lurcat-paris-american-1927/), [85. XM.259.12](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/55839/andre-kertesz-jean-lurcat-paris-american-1929/); [86.XM.706.2](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/55854/andre-kertesz-chimneys-paris-american-1926-1927/), [86.XM.706.10](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/55861/andre-kertesz-chez-mondrian-paris-american-1926/), [86.XM.706.12](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/55863/andre-kertesz-peggy-rosskam-paris-american-1927/), [86.XM.706.14](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/55865/andre-kertesz-anna-marie-merkel-mme-repsz-paris-american-1926-1927/)). Kertész's acquaintance with Mondrian appears to have been his first personal experience with an artist who was part of the main current of European Modernism. After seeing Mondrian's art, Kertész suddenly began to create spare and structured photographs as he allowed the Formalism first glimpsed in [*Wine Cellars at Budafok*](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/55741/andre-kertesz-wine-cellars-at-budafok-american-1919/) to dominate. > > Adapted from *André Kertész*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Weston Naef (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1994), 40. ©1994, J. Paul Getty Museum.

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