Lot Essay
In 1926, Feri Róth, a violinist, hired Kertész to make publicity photographs of a new quartet he had assembled. Kertész made approximately five negatives of the group of which this severely cropped version is one. Sandra Phillips observes, "Roth got what he desired, while Kertész the artist drew from one of these photographs the abstract composition he envisioned. True to his sense of his medium, as with The Stairs of Montmartre, he never interfered with its process except through cropping. Many of his photographs from this time are radically cut down, and often he reinvestigated these croppings like a musician experimenting with a new interpretation of his own composition." (Of Paris and New York, pp. 31-32.)
This print was acquired in 1983.
This print was acquired in 1983.