Jose Maria Sert - Photographien. - Katalog zur gelichnamigen Ausstellung im Georg - Kolbe - Museum zu Berlin, Dezember 1996 - Februar 1997. Sert, Jose Maria. - Beiträge: Anne Ganteführer / Brigitte Hausmann / Sabine Leßmann und Martin Mosebach. Published by Amsterdam, Van Soest / Cinubia, 1996.

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José Maria Sert, a Spanish muralist who moved to Paris in 1900, experienced photography as a constant companion. We know nothing about his first encounter with the medium, nor when it was that he decided to carry out through photography transfers from reality to the imagination – from live sampling to formal interpretation – any more than the point where this went from being a simple mnemonic convenience to a genuine working method, with the deliberate conception of poses and stagings as a basis for making images, and still less what favoured the shift from proofs to perfected prints. And one also might note the ultimate change in status of his photography, from an intermediate step to an end in itself. What explanation can be suggested, other than the euphoria of forms obtained by means of photography alone, and the degree of liberty that was to be found in a small, autonomous format, as opposed to the expanses of walls and the constraints of spaces, not forgetting the exclusive wealth of the ranges of greys, for a painter who was familiar with the nebulae of light and shadow in grisaille, and who worshipped gold?

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