Getty Museum

Jean Lurçat, Paris

Date

1929

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

Object ID

df920e06-9a93-461a-be5f-e61abafcbdaa

>During André Kertész's first three or four years in Paris, one force that maximized his aesthetic growth was the general influence of the artists he met, such as Jean Lurçat (1892-1966), whose studio we see here. He recalled that his portraits of artists were not made on assignment for the variety of illustrated publications that bought his photographs (_Le Sourire, Variétés_, _Le Matin_, _Kolnische IllustrierteZeitung_, _Berliner Illustriert Zeitung_, _Das Illustriert Blatt_, and others). In these portraits he seems to be asking and trying to answer for himself the question, What is an artist? Though he had no formal art school training himself, Kertész no doubt had begun to understand that he, too, was one of this elusive breed. (For an image of Lurçat's studio, see [85.XM.259.11](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/104EKD).) Originally published in André Kertész, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Weston Naef (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1994), 52. ©1994, J. Paul Getty Museum.

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