Eugen Wiškovský

The oeuvre of the leading Czech avant-garde photographer Eugen Wiškovský (1888–1964) is not large in size or range of topics, yet it is great owing to its originality, depth of ideas, and mastery of form. In his early works, from the late 1920s and early 1930s, in the style of New Objectivity, Wiškovský sought artistically effective forms in apparently nonaesthetic objects. By the use of crops, changing scale, and inventive lighting, he freed them from secondary aspects, allowing the elementary lines of these forms to stand out. He often emphasized potential metaphorical meanings as well. In his dynamic diagonal compositions, Wiškovský was among the most radical practioners of Czech Constructivist photography. Similarly, his landscape work is highly individual, sometimes employing form analogies to accentuate visual symbols. The author of the present publication, Vladimír Birgus, is an historian of photography and head of the Institute of Creative Photography at Silesian University, Opava, in the Czech Republic.