Gertrudes Altschul: Small Formats

Isabel Amado Fotografia & Luciana Brito Galeria
[Luciana Brito Galeria]
October 16, 2021 – January 29, 2022

Gertrudes Altschul played a pioneering role in the consolidation of modern photography in Brazil. In the lead up to the 60th anniversary of her death (1962), Luciana Brito Galeria, in a joint effort with Isabel Amado Fotografia, the exclusive representative of the artist’s works, is presenting the show Gertrudes Altschul: Pequenos Formatos [Gertrudes Altschul: Small Formats], as part of its Visiting Artist program. The artist is currently being recognized by two exhibitions at eminent museums: one at the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA-NY), Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946–1964, and the other at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Filigrana [Filigree], the largest solo show ever held about her work. For its part, the show Pequenos Formatos features more than 35 small original vintage prints by the artist, made between 1948 in 1960, which were recently discovered by the family and are shown here for the first time. The exhibition presents a panorama that conveys the relevance of the artist’s production while engaging in direct dialogue with the modernist architecture of the former residence designed by Rino Levi.

From a Jewish background, fleeing the Nazi regime and German anti-Semitism, Gertrudes Altschul disembarked in Brazil with her family to set up residence in São Paulo, in 1939. From then onward, photography became an integral part of the artist’s life, whether for recording her everyday experience, or to help in creating the production molds for the family’s factory, which made ornamental flowers for hats and other decorative purposes. In the late 1940s, Gertrudes Altschul approached the Foto Cineclube Bandeirante, which was the epicenter for the leading lights of modern photography in Brazil, becoming one of the few female members. Together with Geraldo de Barros, German Lorca and Thomaz Farkas, the artist then began to practice photography in keeping with the experimental investigations of the São Paulo School of Photography, thinking of and using photography as a medium for artistic expression.

With innate artistic sensibilities, Gertrudes Altschul was adept at combining elements into a connected whole, whether in the capture of the object in her gaze, or by her skill at editing, which became a determinant process in the dynamics of her creation and production. Based on photographs made with a Rolleiflex camera, whose large negatives were better suited to experimentation, the artist already defined a specific rectangular framing based on the camera’s original 6 x 6 cm square film frame. It was through the manipulation of the angles that she managed to select what most interested her and to accentuate the graphic aspects of the image. Gertrudes Altschul was also adept at using the photogram technique, in which objects are positioned directly over the photographic paper and project their shapes onto it in ways that allow for the maximum exploration of their original forms, producing results that can also be seen at the exhibition.

In her production, the city of São Paulo – then in a phase of rapid geographical, economic and cultural growth – became the perfect scenario for photographic experiments, through a particular interest for modern industrial architecture, which was undergoing an intense process of verticalization with new real-estate developments. In photographing the city’s architecture and urban spaces, Gertrudes Altschul used vantage points, angles and framings that highlight their details and transform the referent into geometric abstraction. The work Concreto Abstrato [Abstract Concrete], featured in the exhibition, is considered one of the key works of modern photography in Brazil, and is a good example of the deconstruction of the object based on tight framing, re-signifying it within the constructivist aesthetic, then in vogue in Brazil during the 1950s.

Another striking aspect in her research, and unique among the modernist concept of that time, was the use of natural foliage and botanical motifs in her experiments with photography. The organic and geometric patterns typical of Brazilian vegetation attracted Gertrudes Altschul’s gaze, which empowered their natural qualities and geometric patterns through the dramaticity of light and perspective. Regarding this concept, the work Filigrana [Filigree], featured in the exhibition, is among the ten most important photographs of modernity worldwide, according to the curator of MoMA-NY and North American researcher, Sarah Meister.

SELECTED WORKS

Modern Photography

Isabel Amado Fotografia & Luciana Brito Galeria
[Luciana Brito Galeria]
November 21, 2020 – January 31, 2021

Luciana Brito Galeria and Isabel Amado Fotografia are joining forces once again to strengthen the partnership begun in 2019 and lend continuity to the work of disseminating Brazilian modern photography. In its second edition, the exhibition Modern Photography: Gaspar Gasparian, Geraldo de Barros, Gertrudes Altschul, Marcel Giró, Paulo Pires and Thomaz Farkas features a selection of photographs which very significantly recover the historical phase when Brazilian photography stepped away from pictorialism to begin an investigation into abstraction.

In a context of intense social, economic and political transformations, the 1940s and 1950s were fundamental for consolidating Brazilian photography within the visual arts. The impact of the processes of modernization of the large cities pushed photography to an entirely new artistic and conceptual level. Photography went from being a mere recording tool to a vehicle for technical and aesthetic visual experimentation and for the formalization of a new language in the arts. This discussion was brought to a higher level by the photo club movement, consisting of groups such as the FCCB (Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante), which promoted and organized this activity within the circuit. Photography then began to be considered as a means of artistic expression, which had the photo clubs as a form of organization and professionalization of this sector, through the training of photographers, technical improvements, and the systematization of production, along with the organization of shows, juried exhibitions and national and international competitions.

While they each present their own specificity within Brazilian modern photography, the artists chosen for this show share a common aim: the search for improvements that are not only technical, but also representative in the sense of escaping from traditionalism and renewing the concepts of photography in the Brazilian context. Abstractionism within photographic research represents a fundamental turning point for definitively positioning this language among the canons of art history. Shadows, textures, geometric shapes, darkroom experiments, the Sabattier effect and photograms were artifices intensely explored by these artists.

After nearly 70 years, the results of these undertakings can be assessed, since representative institutions in Brazil and other countries are focusing on the importance of this movement and on the advance of current photography around the world. For example, in March 2021 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, is inaugurating the largest exhibition ever held outside Brazil dedicated precisely to this facet of Brazilian history.

Artists
Gaspar Gasparian
Geraldo de Barros
Gertrudes Altschul
Marcel Giró
Paulo Pires
Thomaz Farkas

convite-EDIT.jpg

Modern Photography 1940-1960

Isabel Amado & Luciana Brito Galeria
[Luciana Brito Galeria]
June 29 – September 7, 2019

THE IDEA OF CONSTRUCTION AS A METAPHOR OF MODERNITY

Modern photography in Brazil was manifested through a wide range of different practices and approaches. Whether in photojournalism, in the photography of architecture, in photoclubs, in the production of photo documentaries, or even in fashion and advertising, what is observed are different ways of responding to a world in rapid transformation. The nine photographers featured in the show – Ademar Manarini, Eduardo Salvatore, Gaspar Gasparian, Geraldo de Barros, Gertrudes Altschul, Paulo Pires, Marcel Giró, Mario Fiori and Thomaz Farkas – were to a greater or lesser extent linked to the universe of the photoclubs and aimed to investigate the artistic potential of photography, free from the restraints of professionalism.

From different origins and backgrounds – some from families of immigrants – the photographers represented here produced their images under the impact of the process of modernization which, from the mid-1940s onward, reconfigured the look of the big cities in Brazil. In general, they resorted to photography as a tool able to express the new ways of seeing and experiencing the entirely new urban context. These aims were materialized through direct photography but also through experiments such as photograms, montages and the Sabattier effect. While some limited themselves to exercises of a formalist character, others sought to enlarge the understanding of photography beyond the characteristic repertoire of the photoclub and what was conventionally known as the province of photography.

Individual differences aside, it seems that the idea of construction runs as a common thread through all the images presented here. The verb “to construct”, as explained by the dictionaries, is synonymous with building, erecting and architecting. These actions are materialized in different ways in these photographs, which sometimes result from a rigorous gaze on the world, and sometimes spring from a creative clashing with the material, by way of manipulations. Not by chance, photography and architecture were manifestations of modernism in perfect tune with each other in Brazil in the period following World War II. Building new architectural forms and constructing a new photographic language shared in the same ideal of constructing a modern country, as is evident in the photo Canteiro de obras [Construction Site], which Thomaz Farkas produced during the construction of Brasília, in 1958.

A little more than sixty years later, this exhibition presents modern Brazilian photography from the viewpoint of the photoclub, in dialogue with the beautiful space designed by architect Rino Levi in the late 1950s, officially declared a municipal and state heritage site of São Paulo. If the power of this encounter recalls a special moment in the country’s history, it also reveals that our enchantment with these images is in large part due to how they hold the potentials of a promised future. Today, however, perhaps more than ever, they give us a strange feeling of nostalgia for what we did not manage to become.

[Text by Helouise Costa]

selected Clipping (portuguese)

Power and Suffocation

SP-Arte/Foto/2016

São Paulo Photography Fair
[JK Iguatemi]
August 24–28, 2016

2016_Expo%2BParalelas%2Be%2BDiagonais_sp-arte%253Afoto_1.jpg

Parallels and Diagonals [Paralelas e Diagonais]
Special project for SP-Arte/Foto/2016
Curated by Isabel Amado and Iatã Cannabrava

Artists
Ademar Manarini
Eduardo Salvatore
Gertrudes Altschul
Georges Radó
José Yalenti
Marcel Giró
Mario Fiori
Paulo Pires

selected clipping (portuguese)

A Modern Woman: Photographs by Gertrudes Altschul

Uma Mulher Moderna: Fotografias de Gertrudes Altschul
Curatorship by Isabel Amado
[Casa da Imagem]
March 7 – June 20, 2015

A Modern Woman
Photographs by Gertrudes Altschul

Dry leaves, paper and plastic flowers, created in the small studio that Gertrude kept with her husband – skills brought along with her luggage from Germany as a survival tool, were in fact inspirational references, and which reframed through photography, result in a work of profound aesthetic rigor, including experiences such as superimposed negatives, construction of small scenes (table top) or simply direct takes, which even as such, continue to seek the loss of reference. 

The solarized leaves, the lines, the contours of objects, all indicate a weight of respect full of expression – to the form, and what is understood by it; What is real? What is palpable? Her work offers total freedom for creation.

As it was for the majority of the photographers of the movement known as the Paulista School, photography was not the main activity of Gertrudes, but it was through it that she explored the concepts of craft, applied her artisanal experience and took advantage of one of the most modern instruments of that time, the photographic camera, as a resource of comprehension and a tool of transformation considered to be an artistic direction.

The solarized vultures are here transformed into seagulls, with the intention to poeticize the cruelty of survival, the branches that emerge squeezed on the right side of the image, show an unexplainable sensuality, the spider web reveals the net of the insect and is transformed into a veil.

Revisiting concepts became a habit in this artist’s life, who left her country of origin running from war, remaining one year without seeing her small son, who not by accident keeps Gertrude’s collection until today.

She wasn't the only, or the first. A woman in a strictly masculine club (and here I refer to the photography as a whole), is at a minimum uncommon and opens the way to deeper research into who these woman were.

[Text by Isabel Amado]

Movimento Coletivo

Opening of the Galeria da Rua and Trecho 2.8 project exhibition
In partnership with Fundação Marcos Amaro
[Galeria da Rua]
March 30 – May 15, 2011

Antonio, Luiz e Bina

Collective exhibition by Antonio Augusto Fontes, Luiz Braga and Bina Fonyat
[Galeria da Gávea]
August 26 – September 30, 2010

Invitation

Invitation

Convergence

Convergência
Collective exhibition by Alexandre Sant’Anna, Ana Carolina Fernandes, Ana Stewart, Antonio Augusto Fontes, Antonio Guerreiro, Bina Fonyat, Bruno Veiga, Julio Bittencourt, Luiz Braga, Marcos Piffer, Marlene Bergamo, Murillo Meirelles, Paulo Jares, Renan Cepeda, Ricardo Azoury, Ricardo Fasanello, Rogério Reis, and Walter Carvalho
[Galeria da Gávea]
August 19 – October 16, 2009

Invitation

Invitation