Marijan Szabo (1913-1967): Corso A Varatoin (1962) By Staniú (Vintage Photo)

original vintage photo of a modern art painting - no reprint!

yugoslavia ~ 1960s

artist: staniú

photographer: marijan szabo (1913-1967) -> zagreb school of photography

vladimir gudac from the croatian association of artists about marijan szabo:

Before the invention of photography the past was quite different than it is in this day and age. Many questions and answers related to the existence of this mechanically produced image in the first half of the 19th century can be roughly reduced to a few topics.

The main question is whether the photographic image can produce a work of art. The next question refers to the so-called pure photography and the other one that is not. Then, if the photographic image cannot be art, what is it then. And if the photographic image has produced art, what kind of art, an art separate and special or is it just a part of that generated contingent of images that have been recognized as art regardless of the medium in which they have been realised.

In this context, we can look back in time for a moment upon the photographic work of Marijan Szabo. First of all, it is a historical fact that the name of this photographer is associated with the Zagreb school of photography and its inseparable Fotoklub Zagreb which was founded as a club for amateur photographers in 1892.

It seems as if there is no dilemma within this context as to whether the photographic images are works of art, because the basic assumption is that membership in the club, exhibitions, diplomas and awards are also an alibi for separating the photographic image from the banal and uncreative towards one that has no particular value apart from that of technological correctness. The club is therefore an oasis within which exotic products are grown and in which it becomes desirable to nurture a certain similarity, a so-called school.

Thus, for example, Marijan Szabo arrives at the waterfall in Jajce in 1930 and compositionally places it in the middle of his format. His club colleague William Herrnstein records the same waterfall by moving the frame a little to the left and thus getting another variant, but the technology of photo imaging and the subsequent postproduction in both images are the same: aestheticization and variations become, in effect, a characteristic. All this takes place in the context of examples of photographic production in Europe and partly in America (see Camerawork and Pictorialism), but especially in the context of a certain romanticism of the 1930s (landscapes, folklore), the New Reality (Neue Sachlichkeit) and distant echoes of the radical movements of the Russian avant-garde and the experiment of Bauhaus. The photographic images of Marijan Szabo should be regarded within this context. The charm of these images lies in the enthusiasm towards the landscape that allows a high aestheticization of the image, which in turn becomes largely an independent work of art. This applies to all of his photographic works, when he marvels at the so-called bird’s eye angles or in his later works of the 1960s when he discovers informel characteristics of landscapes. His work ranges from the so-called school and current trends in Western art to the photography which ultimately, on a foggy Winter morning in 1966, near the end of his life, offers quite subjectively the image of a landscape as a personal farewell to the world.

size photo: ~ 15.3 x 23.7 cm (1 cm ~ 0.39 inch)

glossy print

condition: photo is in very good to excellent condition...please also refer to scans which show complete front and backside of photo

photography, fotografie, foto, croatia, modern art, bauhaus, avant-garde, kroatien, fotograf, kunst, abstract art