Gertrudes Altschul – A modern Woman
Isabel Amado Fotografia e Galeria da Gávea
[Galeria da Gávea | R. Marquês de São Vicente 432 | Rio de Janeiro - RJ]
March 25th util May 191th 2023
54 photographs were selected for the show: there are 43 original Vintage images, in silver gelatin on paper, developed by Gertrudes herself in the 1950’s, and 11 limited series (each with a series of 10 silver prints) developed from the original negatives.
The images revolve around 3 axes: registry of Modernist Brazilian architecture, where shadows and unusual bottom up angles compose pictures with exquisite geometrical rigor, at a time when in São Paulo, her city of residence, experienced a development boom; Botanical registers, frequently made in very tight angles, making the veins of leaves approach graphic abstraction – the Filigrana image is it’s best example; and, still, images of the everyday universe, small traders and a lifeguard at the beach.
Gertrudes was born in Berlin in 1904, named Martha Gertrud Leszczynsk. She and her husband Leon Altschul, whom she married in 1928, crossed the Atlantic towards the American continent, taking the same route as thousands of Jewish people fleeing Nazism, arriving in 1939 in São Paulo.
Ernst, now 93 and still living in São Paulo, kept all of his mother’s collection after her death in 1962. He was the one which curator Isabel Amado sought after stumbling upon Gertrudes work in 2013, while researching about Foto Cine Clube Bandeirantes – a photographer’s association founded in 1939, considered the cradle of the modernist Brazilian photography. Ernst granted her custody of the photographs in exchange for the conservation and dissemination of the collection. Isabel has exclusive rights in managing and commercialization of the artist’s works.
"There were other women at the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirantes, but many were there as their husbands' partners. Not Gertrudes. She was on her own", Isabel notes. "Her interest in the photo club was an artistic interest, one of personal expression, but it was also a social matter: the photo club was formed by a majority of foreigners, fleeing the war, who saw there an opportunity for socialization".
Gertrudes was officially admitted as a member of the FCCB in 1952, and began to participate in group exhibitions, photography salons and even the 2nd Bienal de Arte de São Paulo, in 1953, when the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirantes had a room with the work of its associates. In 1996, a photo of her illustrated the cover of the book A fotografia moderna no Brasil (Modern photography in Brazil), by Helouise Costa and Renato Rodrigues, the most important reference in the study of photography in the period from 1940 to 1960.
It was only in 2015 that Gertrudes won her first solo exhibition, organized by Isabel Amado at Casa da Imagem, an important photography space in São Paulo. The show provoked instant interest for the photographer’s body of work, including by Sarah Meister, then curator of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. In the following year, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand – MASP incorporated 12 of the artist’s photographs into its collection. MoMA, after negotiations started in 2015, also acquired ten of Gertrude’s vintage photographs for its collection, that were previously exhibited at the show Making space: women artists and postwar abstraction, in 2017.
In 2021, Gertrudes' photographs were part of the MoMA's Photoclub exhibition: Brazilian modernist photography and the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante 1946-1964, curated by Sarah Meister and Dana Ostrander. The National Gallery of Art, in Washington, also included Gertrudes in the exhibition and catalog The new woman behind the camera, from 2021, in which there is only another Brazilian, Alice Brill. In the same year, MASP held the Filigrana exhibition, curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Tomás Toledo.
photos:Alexandre Savino
Installation exclusively created for this exhibition from the photograph “Teia” (web) by Gertrudes Altschul
