The exhibition will showcase the close friendship and work of Josef Sudek and Otto Rothmayer

Prague – One of its most extensive exhibitions of this year is being inaugurated by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. It is named Josef Sudek / Otto Rothmayer: A Visit to Mr. Magician and commemorates not only this year's 125th anniversary of the birth of photographer Josef Sudek. It will also introduce visitors to the deep and mutually stimulating friendship between the photographer and the architect of Prague Castle, Rothmayer. The comprehensive exhibition showcases Sudek's world-famous photographs of the architect’s realizations at the Castle, but mainly a selection from the cycles that originated at the architect's villa in Prague's Břevnov district.

The exhibition will be accessible from Thursday until March 27, with its author being the longtime curator of the museum's photographic collections, Jan Mlčoch. It also involved the Museum of the City of Prague, which manages Rothmayer's villa. The exposition also commemorates the 55th anniversary of Rothmayer's death and highlights the fact that Sudek's sister Božena donated a significant part of the estate to the Museum of Decorative Arts (UPM) after the famous creator's death.

According to Mlčoch, the exhibition is about the friendship of two men who met during the challenging times of Nazi occupation as mature artists but remained close to each other both personally and professionally for the rest of their lives. Their work at Prague Castle, where Rothmayer took over from Josip Plečnik and where Sudek often photographed, introduced them. However, the main place of their meetings became Rothmayer's villa in Břevnov and its garden, which Sudek managed to capture as a mysterious place full of poetic nooks, stated Mlčoch.

This is evocatively represented in the exhibition by nearly two hundred Sudek photographs from the UPM collections as well as prototypes of Rothmayer's garden furniture and items designed by friends of both men, who formed a strong community meeting at Rothmayer's villa even in the difficult post-war period. Visitors to the exhibition can also visit the villa itself.

Photographer Josef Sudek was a personality of global significance. His black-and-white images serve as greetings from a long-lost world, and Sudek’s simple, austere compositions of everyday objects surrounding him are also well-known. All his photographs exude a fascination with light in all its fleeting forms. Sudek’s lifelong inspiration came from the nooks of Prague and architectural monuments.

His well-known photographic cycles include From the Invalidovna, St. Vitus, The Window of My Studio, A Walk in the Magical Garden, The Primeval Forest of Mionší, Contrasts and Labyrinths, or Panoramic Prague, which belong to his free work. Particularly in the 30s and 40s, he also worked as a commissioned photographer. He photographed portraits and collaborated with a number of companies.

The Prague Museum of Decorative Arts has an extensive collection of photography, which includes 70,000 positives and 30,000 negatives. It also has the largest collection of Sudek's works. The historian Anna Fárová, who met Sudek when she was eighteen, played a key role in acquiring them. For his eightieth birthday in 1986, she prepared a retrospective. After his death, she sorted his estate and later became the heir to his copyright.