František Drtikol

Drtikol was born in Příbram into a merchant family, the younger of three children, brother of sisters, Ema and Maria.

He was married twice: in 1921–1926 to Ervín Kupferova, with whom he had a daughter, and then in 1942–1959 (until her death) to Jarmila Rambouskova As a young man he wanted to be a painter, but his father directed him to train for a less precarious career as a photographer.

[1] In 1901, aged 18 and after an apprenticeship, he enrolled in the Teaching and Research Institute of Photography in Munich, a city which was major centre of Symbolism and Art Nouveau and which was influential on his career.

[1] In 1910 he relocated to Prague, where he established a portrait studio on the fourth floor of a Baroque corner house at 9 Vodičkova, now demolished.

In the final stage of his photographic work Drtikol created compositions of little carved figures, with elongated shapes, symbolically expressing various themes from Buddhism.