Eugen Wiskovsky

The oeuvre of the leading Czech avant-garde photographer Eugen Wiskovsky (1888-1964) is not large in size or subject range, but it is noteworthy in its originality, depth of ideas, and mastery. Wiskovsky's early New Objectivist works, from the late 1920s and early 1930s, sought artistic effect in apparently nonaesthetic objects: His inventive lighting and cropping allowed their elementary lines to stand out, to lose their worldly associations and take on potential metaphorical meanings. In his dynamic diagonal compositions, Wiskovsky was among the most radical practitioners of Czech Constructivism. His landscape work is similarly distinctive. With text from Vladim'r Birgus, a historian of photography and the head of the Institute of Creative Photography at Silesian University, Opava, in the Czech Republic.