Eva Besnyö (1910–2003) the Sensuous Image 22 May – 23 September 2012 Collection, Berlin Private

# 92 Concorde Eva Besnyö (1910–2003) The Sensuous Image 22 May – 23 September 2012 Collection, Berlin Private . Lido at Wannsee, Berlin. 31 Untitled, 19 Untitled, 1931 Untitled, 1933 Selfportrait, Berlin John Fernhout’s Shadow, Westkapelle, Zealand, The Netherlands Private Collection, Berlin Iara Brusse Collection, Amsterdam Eva Besnyö (1910–2003) is one of those women architecture she recorded, in a highly personal manner, who found in photography not just a profession but over a long period. The invasion of the Netherlands also a form of liberation, and of those cosmopolitan by Nazi Germany in 1940 marked a dramatic turning avant-garde artists who chose Europe as their playing point in Eva Besnyö’s life. If she managed to come out field for both play and work. Immediately after of hiding in 1944, thanks to an invented genealogy, her photographic training in the studio of József the traces of this experience would remain acute Pécsi in Budapest, Eva Besnyö left the repressive, throughout the postwar decades. During the 1950s antiprogressive environment of her native Hungary for and 60s, her family life led her to abandon street ever. Then aged 20, she decided, like her compatriots photography for commissions. Finally, in the twilight László Moholy-Nagy, Martin Munkácsi, György of her career, the photographer militated in the Dolle Kepes and Endre Friedmann (Robert Capa), to go to Mina feminist movement, whose street actions she Berlin. As soon as she arrived in autumn 1930, she chronicled in the 1970s. discovered there a dynamic photographic scene, open With more than 120 vintage prints, some modern prints to experimentation and placed under the double sign and numerous documents, this first French retrospective of the New Vision and the New Objectivity, whose devoted to Eva Besnyö aims to show the public the modern language would allow her to develop her different facets of her work, which is situated between personal style. New Vision, New Objectivity and social documentary, Of Jewish origins, Eva Besnyö, who foresaw the threat at the crossroads between poetry and political activism. of National Socialism, moved to the Netherlands in 1932 where she met again her companion the film With other eyes director John Fernhout. There she was welcomed In 1929, during her second year of apprenticeship into the circle of international artists around the to József Pécsi, portrait and advertising photograper painter Charley Toorop, and rapidly became known in Budapest, Eva Besnyö received the book of in Amsterdam, where she had her own photographic photographs Die Welt ist schön (The World is studio. A solo exhibition at the Kunstzaal van Lier Beautiful), published a few months earlier in Munich. in 1933 gained the attention notably of the Dutch Its author, Albert Renger-Patzsch, is the precursor of followers of the “Neues Bauen” (New Building), whose New Objectivity in photography. While pictorialism Amsterdam, 1933 Untitled, 1931 Jordaan District Coalman, Berlin Iara Brusse Collection, Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum Collection, Amsterdam. Acquired with the generous support of the Ministry of Welfare, Health and Cultural Affairs, The Hague reigned in Hungary, Eva Besnyö discovered the world Worker and social photography with other eyes: from up close and under unexpected At the Marxist Workers’ School in Berlin, Eva Besnyö angles. With these new models in mind and her schooled her social and political conscience. In her Rolleiflex in hand, she strode along the banks of the circle of friends gathered around fellow Hungarian Danube in search of subjects and daring viewpoints, György Kepes, she discussed passionately the showing concern for a precise, close-up description role of the workers’ movements. In Berlin, as earlier of the most diverse objects, as well as a taste for in Budapest, Eva Besnyö took her camera to the fragmentation and for the repetition of the motif in principal sites of trade and business, where she the frame. photographed labourers hard at work: dockers on As soon as she finished her studies, Eva Besnyö the Spree, coalmen in the street, fitters perched on went to Berlin on the advice of the painter and ladders; in the city centre, she followed the workers photographer György Kepes - and against the at Alexanderplatz, in around 1930 the largest wishes of her father who would have preferred that construction site in Europe. In Hungary, where she she chose Paris. The Berlin years, between 1930 and returned from time to time from Berlin, she carried out 1932, were for her those of a political and aesthetic an extraordinary documentary project on the people awakening. Besides the influence of the revolutionary of Kiserdö, in the suburbs of Budapest. Blessed with aesthetic of Russian cinema, she came under that a heightened political awareness, she had already of the New Vision, which took off with László understood by 1932 that, as a Jew, her future was not Moholy-Nagy and his book Painting Photography Film in this country, and left Berlin for Amsterdam. (1925), using a whole stylistic grammar, advocating downward perspectives or low-angle shots, a taste New Vision and New Building for the isolated object and its repetition, as well as In 1933, the solo show devoted by the Kunstzaal optical manipulations revealing an unknown, but van Lier to Eva Besnyö just one year after her arrival very real, world. The activity of the town or the empty in Amsterdam aroused the enthusiasm of numerous crossroads of Starnberger Straße, portraits and architects – her principal clients in the years to come. images of summer on the banks of Lake Wannsee Mostly members of the group de 8 in Amsterdam count among Besnyö’s most successful compositions. and the radical abstract collective Opbouw in Untitled, 1934 Summer House in Groet, North Holland, Merkelbach & Karsten architects Iara Brusse Collection, Amsterdam Rotterdam, they discerned in her images, which family often spent their holidays. In this landscape emphasised the functional side of objects, their shaped by the natural elements, Eva Besnyö structure and their texture, a suitable approach for returned to a free photographic practice, with views explaining their buildings. of vast beaches of white sand, of black silhouettes Equipped with a Linhof 9 x 12 cm plate camera against a background of old windmills and cut-out acquired especially for the purpose, Eva Besnyö shadows. went to building sites and photographed public and private buildings, notably the studios of the Dutch Rotterdam radio station AVRO at Hilversum, the Cineac cinema In July 1940, Eva Besnyö photographed the old town in Amsterdam and a summer house in Groet, in of Rotterdam destroyed by German airforce bombing. the north of the country. Become, in the 1930s, the Far from classic photo-journalism, these images of ruins preferred photographer of Dutch New Building, Eva and traces of devastation – from which, in retrospect, Besnyö made most of her income at the time from she distanced herself – are today silent, bare architectural photography. statements of the wounds and scars of history. Bergen and Westkapelle Dolle Mina From Amsterdam, where from 1935 to 1939 she The Dolle Mina feminist movement gathered both shared a studio at Keizersgracht 522 with the men and women, mainly from the student protest photographer Carel Blazer and the architect movement. In the 1970s, Eva Besnyö militated Alexander Bodon, Eva Besnyö went regularly to actively within it, alongside sympathisers of all ages. Bergen and Westkapelle, two villages where many In a second phase, she focused on photographic artists gathered. In Bergen, north of Amsterdam, documentation of the movement’s actions and Charley Toorop, Expressionist painter and mother activities, taking responsibility for sending out of the film director John Fernhout, whom Eva had images daily, like a press agency. married in 1933, held an artistic salon in the De Vlerken studio. It was at Westkapelle, a centuries- Marion Beckers and Elisabeth Moortgat, old village built on a polder in Zealand, that the curators of the exhibition chronology 1910 1952 Birth of Eva Besnyö in Budapest, daughter of Jewish The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam presents the lawyer Béla Besnyö (1877–1944) and Ilona, née exhibition ”Photographie” reuniting Eva Besnyö, Kelemen (1883–1981). Emmy Andriesse, Carel Blazer and Cas Oorthuys. 1928–1930 1953 Apprenticeship in Budapest under József Pécsi, Participates in the exhibition “Post-war European internationally renowned portrait and advertising Photography” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. photographer. 1955 1930–1932 Participates in the international exhibition “The Family Lives in Berlin, where she is back in contact with of Man”, organised by Edward Steichen at the the painter and photographer György Kepes, and Museum of Modern Art in New York. works in the studios, first, of René Ahrlé, then, of 1958–1961 Peter Weller, before setting up in her own right. Her photo essays include “People in Museums” and The New Vision and Russian cinema influence her “Women in Male Profession”. photography. The persecution of the Jews by the 1970–1980 National Socialists force her to leave Berlin. Photojournalist and active member of the Dolle Mina 1933–1935 feminist movement. Becomes a member of the Association of Worker- 1982 Photographers. In Amsterdam, her husband, the film First retrospective ”Eva Besnyö - ’n halve eeuw werk” director John Fernhout, introduces her to a circle of at the Amsterdam Historical Museum. politically engaged artists and intellectuals, gathered 1994–1999 around the painter Charley Toorop and the film Receives the Piet Zwart Prize and the Oeuvre Prize director Joris Ivens. A solo show at the Kunstzaal van in the Netherlands and the Erich Salomon Prize from Lier brings her to the attention of the architectural the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (German world. Publishes in the magazine de 8 en Opbouw. Photography Society). 1936–1938 2003 Takes part in the exhibition against the Berlin Eva Besnyö dies in Laren, near Hilversum.

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