2col hoch.jpg

Hannah Höch (German, 1889–1978), “The Coquette I,” 1923–1925, photomontage (printed matter), Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., Stuttgart. ©2007 Hannah Höch Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

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Rudolf Balogh (Hungarian, 1879–1944), “Shepherd with Dogs (Juhász kutyáival),” circa 1930, gelatin silver print, 18 by 29 inches. Hungarian Museum of Photography.

2 cuts took off pressroom, sent downstairs in e-m 2-1

For 2-8

European Photography to open at Milwaukee Art Museum February 9 w/2cuts

AVV/CD #727620

MILWAUKEE, WIS. — A golden age of photographic experimentation takes shape in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s presentation of “Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918–1945,” organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and on view here through May.

Together with its accompanying film program, “Foto” explores photography in Germany, Austria, the former Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary as the ultimate modern art form: a democratic response to such hallmarks of modernity as the advent of industrialization and new technologies, the growth of cities and urban lifestyles, and the rise of nationalism.

A survey spanning 27 years, the exhibition explores the myriad uses and forms of photography in 165 original artworks, books and illustrated magazines from several dozen American and international collections. “Foto” is divided into eight sections organized thematically, each comparing local differences against a heritage of shared institutions and attitudes toward modernity.

A mix of avant-garde, landscape and documentary photography, as well as photomontages and printed materials, appears throughout. Four films displayed within the exhibition space, along with weekly film features by period filmmakers, complete the presentation.

“Foto” examines photography during a period of unparalleled growth in its popularity, at a time when artists were catalyzed by unprecedented social and political upheaval between the two world wars. The exhibition locates photographic innovation in places previously overlooked by the standard art historical focus in America, France, Germany and Russia alone.

Photographers across central Europe united to engage the modern world, and to forge a history for their chosen medium, in ways that continue to influence how one interprets both reality and photography in the present day.

“Foto” is the first exhibition to bring together masters such as El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Hannah Hoch with lesser-known contemporaries such as Karel Teige, Jaromir Funke, Stefan Themerson and Kazimierz Podsadecki, attesting to the range and dynamic output of the era. Lending institutions include the National Gallery of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museums of Hungary and Poland, and Albertina Museum in Vienna.

The exhibition is curated by Matthew S. Witkovsky, associate curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, and is coordinated at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Losa Hostetler, associate curator of photographs.

The museum is at 700 North Art Museum Drive. For information 414-224-3200 or www.mam.org