Eva Besnyö

Photographer Eva Besnyö (1910 – 2003) not only bore witness to but served as a driving force behind the emancipation of photography. Together with her contemporaries, she experimented freely with a new visual language, one that moved away from painting and towards reality, with a real sense of dynamism and immediacy.

This autumn, Fotomuseum Den Haag will present one of the largest-ever retrospectives of Eva Besnyö’s work. It has been assembled from photographs found in the museum’s own collection, the largest group of her works in the world. Set against the backdrop of a radically-changing Europe, the exhibition follows the course of Besnyö’s life: from her first experiences with the camera in Budapest and her formative years in the gritty Berlin of the 1930s, to her life and career in Bergen and later Amsterdam, where she was part of a progressive creative circle. Also addressed are the Second World War, which left deep marks, and the artist’s involvement with the ‘Dolle Minas’, a feminist movement of the 1970s.

New Photography

Stylistically, a large portion of Eva Besnyö’s work is considered ‘New Photography’, a movement which turned to the camera as a means of revealing the world in a new, object and experimental way. Unexpected camera angles, strong diagonal lines and clean compositions were the movement’s trademarks.

This exhibition was made possible in part with the support of the Municipality of The Hague, VriendenLoterij, the Erik Bos Fund and the Society of Friends of Kunstmuseum Den Haag (Vereniging Vrienden van Kunstmuseum Den Haag) and V-fonds.