Medková, Emila

Czech, 1928-1985

BiographyEmila Medková was a Surrealist documentary photographer who became central to the Prague Surrealist group that emerged in the 1930s. When Medková came on the scene in the late 1940s, artists were facing intensified censorship from the increasingly totalitarian government, resulting in the eventual ban of Surrealism. Medková’s early work was more conventionally indicative of Surrealism, playing with shadows, staging, and seemingly disparate objects to drift between the natural and metaphysical world. In the 1950s and 1960s, she adopted a documentary style aesthetic to confront the changing urban and social environment of Prague. Medková considered her practice in cycles rather than isolated photographs, creating an open-ended, responsive dynamism.

Emila Medková trained at the School of Graphic Arts, Prague, under Josef Ehm. Her first series Shadowplays (1947-1951) was created in collaboration with painter Mikuláš Medek, whom she eventually married. Her series Records began in the early 1950s and marked the shift away from figuration and staging in favor of urban landscape. She again changed direction with her final series The End of Illusions (c. 1974-1985), turning from the city itself in favor of abandoned objects and waste. Because of the ongoing cultural repression by the government, Medková’s work was rarely exhibited in her lifetime. Her first comprehensive solo exhibition was held in 2001 at the Josef Sudek Studio in Prague. Alongside various other Eastern and Central European artists, much of her work was held by the Baruch Foundation. Her work is now held in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; and Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco.