Femme fatale ARTISTS PRODUCERS Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter and graphic artist. He tended towards Impressionism in painting, and his graphic art was inspired by Japanese colour woodcuts. He lived in the Montmartre district of Paris, where he found the subjects for his paintings, drawings, graphic art and posters. He devoted himself to magazine and book illustration (the magazines Revue blanche, L´Escarmouche, Le Rire and La Vache enragée). Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) Aubrey Beardsley was an English draughtsman and illustrator. He was a close friend of writer Oscar Wilde, and an artistic collaborator for the magazines The Studio and The Yellow Book, among others. Through his unmistakable linear style, he influenced a range of successors throughout Europe. František Kupka (1871–1957) František Kupka was a Czech painter and graphic artist of world renown, and one of the founders of abstract painting. His early work ranks among the currents of spiritually fraught symbolism, and was also influenced by Kupka’s interest in Spiritism and occult teachings, especially theosophy, with which he became acquainted during his stay in Vienna between 1891 and 1894. These spiritual influences were reflected in Kupka’s painting and illustrations even in Paris, where he travelled in 1894 on a stipend and where he later spent most of his life. Thomas Theodor Heine (1867–1948) Thomas Theodor Heine was a German painter, illustrator, poster designer and caricaturist. He worked in the circle of the Munich satirical magazine Simplicissimus, and was one of its founders. Heine’s works excel in their cogent and bravura drawing, their expressivity supported by distinctive colouring and unmistakable social and political engagement. František Drtikol (1883–1961) František Drtikol was a founding personality of modern Czech photography, as well as a painter, graphic artist and unorthodox thinker, connecting Europe’s Christian roots with the spiritual legacy of the Buddhist East. Drtikol is the author of excellent Art Nouveau compositions, and from 1912 was the owner of a portrait studio in Prague. In the 1920s, he was one of the creators of photographic Art Deco (e.g. Wave from 1925). Drtikol was the first Czech photographer to achieve world renown during his lifetime. Anton Josef Trčka (1893–1940) Anton Josef Trčka studied photography in Vienna (1911–1914) under Professor Karel Novák, who also influenced him spiritually (anthroposophy). Trčka was celebrated for his portraits of members of Vienna’s cultural scene, in particular those of writer Peter Altenberg, painter Gustav Klimt and Expressionist painter Egon Schiele. Trčka always remembered his Czech roots; he was in contact with the poet Otakar Březina, among others, and later with the Tvrdošíjní group.