The Josef Sudek photographs offered in lots 402 through 406 come from the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and are being sold to benefit acquisition funds. The AGO is home to a remarkable collection of Josef Sudek photographs. Totaling over 1000 prints, it is one of the largest holdings of the photographer’s work. Within that group are a number of close variants which have been identified for deaccession. It is Phillips’ honor to work with the AGO on the sale of these photographs.
While the Art Gallery of Ontario committed to collecting photography in 1978, the museum did not have a curatorial department devoted to the medium until much later. In 2000, an anonymous gift of 973 photographs by Sudek was donated to the AGO. Covering the breadth of Sudek’s career, this large gift transformed the museum’s collection, brought new direction to the development of future collection-building, and prompted the creation of a curatorial department devoted specifically to photography. Since then, the photography collection at the AGO has grown to cover the entire history of the medium, from the 1840s to the present, and now includes more than 70,000 works, illustrating not only the historical breadth of the medium but the vibrancy of work created by photographers today. The sale of these Josef Sudek photographs will help ensure the continuance of the AGOs important work in this field.
Beginning around 1940, Josef Sudek began a series of photographs using the glass paned window of his Prague studio as the primary subject. For Sudek, the glass window – sometimes covered with frost, rain, snow, dew or condensation – remained a constant. Through this window a courtyard with a notable, whimsical crooked tree was visible, as well as a stone building and a street, sometimes with cars parked on it. Sudek experimented with depth-of-field, sometimes placing the exterior word in sharp focus, or rendering the window and its condensation in sharp detail. Often, he placed glasses of water or vases of flowers on the windowsill. He made photographs from his studio window year-round, noting the change of season. The series from Sudek's studio window is probably his best known and are exemplary of his evocative and poetic approach to photography.
