‍

Born in Budapest at the turn of the century, in 1925 Klein Rozsa moved to Paris, the European centre of the artistic avant-garde, after her initial studies at the Academy of Fine Arts of Budapest. Here she met, among others, her compatriot André Kertész, whom she married in 1928 and at whose side she discovered the medium of photography for herself. At that point she had won early commercial success as a photographer of nudes. The two were divorced in 1932, but that did not stop Rogi André, as she called herself from now on, from pursuing a career in photography. A notable feature of the photographs is the sitters’ calm concentration; many reveal defining character traits: here are Marcel Duchamp’s intellectual superiority, Mondrian’s artistic radicality and Balthus’s natural elegance. This is in part due to André’s use of the large-format plate camera with long exposure times; the models needed to become comfortable with being photographed. André moreover reworked her negatives in the darkroom, scratching them and drawing on them to achieve special effects such as the suggestively radiant pupils in one of the portraits of Picasso. Besides the carefully orchestrated lighting, it was presumably also the photographer’s personality, her contempt for snapshot photography and the attention she lavished on her sitters, that yielded pictures that have been compared to Nadar’s, the great 19^th century photographer.

Rogi André also left her mark on the history of surrealist photography. In 1937, she was represented in André Bréton's book Amour fou together with Dora Maar – of whom she also took a brilliantly composed portrait –, Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray. Some of André's prints were acquired at an auction by the head of the photography department at the library of the Bibliothèque nationale in the year of her death; this is where the majority of the loans come from. Newly discovered works like a triptych and the ravishing portrait of Rogi André made by André Kertész in 1928, the remarks and photos by those who knew her, and her entire oeuvre, from the suggestive portraits to the studies of social life, add up to a multifaceted picture. The joy that Colette took in the portrait that André made of her in 1947 – the writer was seventy-four – is eloquent testimony to the empathetic intuition of a photographer who remains underappreciated: “For Rogi André, to whom I owe the fact that I still look like a woman. “

It is time to pay homage to Rogi André on the occasion of her 125th birthday in her home town and to immerse ourselves in the Paris of the late 20s and 30s.

Kerstin Stremmel

‍

On the 125th anniversary of her birth, it is time to finally pay tribute to the work of Rogi André, an artist whose legacy has yet to receive the recognition it deserves. Here, in her hometown, we also have the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the vibrant world of late 1920s and 1930s Paris. A bilingual Hungarian–English catalogue is being published to accompany the exhibition, which will be presented by Kerstin Stremmel, the exhibition’s co-curator, during a special guided tour on July 3. The catalogue is particularly significant as it marks the first time that any material about Rogi André has been published in Hungarian.

‍

The exhibition was realized with the exceptional support of the BnF.

Suggested time to visit the exhibition: 60‒80 min.
Mai Manó House is not barrier-free.
Tickets for the exhibition can only be purchased in person at the venue, as online ticket sales are not available.

‍

‍

‍