Mrs. István Sebők, Berlin

Description

Best known as a sculptor and painter, Gyula Pap first trained at the Graphic Arts School in Vienna (where he learned the basics of photography) and later enrolled in the newly founded Bauhaus to study under the mystic painter and theorist Johannes Itten. Pap began to pursue photography seriously in the mid-1920s, and in 1928, two years after his mentor founded the Itten School, he joined the faculty there to teach graphic arts. This photograph, which Pap made during his tenure at the Itten School, exemplifies the kind of informal, diaristic approach that many Bauhaus students explored in the late 1920s. Its "worm's-eye" perspective reflects the belief that unusual angles could shake conventional habits of seeing the world, a practice that László Moholy-Nagy called the "New Vision."

Mrs. István Sebők, Berlin

Gyula Pap

1930

Accession Number

210877

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Image/paper: 10.4 × 6.3 cm (4 1/8 × 2 1/2 in.)

Classification

photograph

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Purchased with funds provided by Robert and June Leibowits