With Josef Sudek and Jaromír Funke František Drtikol is one of three most popular Czech photographers who achieved worldwide fame as early as during his life organizing tens of special presentations and participating at about 200 group exhibitions held all over the world. His pictures were publicized by tens of magazines from Long Angeles to Charkov. His creative works combined the influences of Jugendstill, Cubism, Constructivism and Expressionism into a characteristic signature.

František Drtikol was born in Příbram on 3rd March, 1883. After years of learning and studies in Munich he opens a studio of his own in Prague. The beginning of his creative work closely relates to the atmosphere at the turn of the century. In addition to photographs there is a number of graphic arts pieces and drawings with the theme of the woman in Jugendstill and Symbolism as well as the first pictorialistically composed nudes which are very near to trends of the time represented by photographs made by Robert Demachy or graphics and paintings by Edward Munch, Franz von Stuck, Félicien Rops or Fernand Khnopff. His central motif becomes to be a stylized yet veristic depiction of the woman's body. The melancholic sadness and latent eroticism of the first attempts are gradually replaced by more dramatically concepted motifs of temptation and destruction, the connexion of love and death that have many a parallel with the Decadent literature. One of motifs which occupied his mind for several years was Salome - the theme that excited Oscar Wilde, Beardsley and later Gustav Klimt. However, he draws out all possibilities offered by the stylization and tries to find a way out.

Works from the period 1910-1920 use the technique of noble prints such as gum print, carbon print, bromoil print, platinum print; gelatin silver papers and bromide papers for photographs, with colour tints in order to improve the resulting image. Also, Drtikol intervenes into the negative to finalize the definitive form of the print. A dramatic change in the general expression of his photographs occurs in the course of the 20s. Drtikol gets free of the chiaro-scuro decorativism typical of the Jugendstill, gradually leaves the traditional composition and finds a new language of expression. The background - pictorially flat and vague at the beginning, acquires geometrical plasticity, the Jugendstill compositions being replaced with the dramatically illuminated abstracted space in which geometrical forms such as wavy lines, stairs, spiral, circle are preferrably used. Irregular articulation of the image into spatial plans draws the viewer's attention into the depth of the picture. A determining artistic method becomes the sharp light and the casted shadow. Models in expressive dynamic posturings are placed in these decorations and often photographed as mere fragments (legs, body without head, ...). The stopped movement generates tension. The compositions are diagonally complemented with shadows and geometrical objects or crossed ropes.

His interest in esotheric teaching increasingly reflects into symbolic meanings of his works with philosophical contents that he wishes to express and that lead him to the very edge of objectivity. The abstracted models - bodies are understood only as a decorative expression part of the image - composition. The live models are later gradually replaced with two-dimensioned silhouettes of highly stylized women's forms. For these non-depicting photographs Drtikol develops a new term of "photopurism". The ethereal figures levitate in the abstract space and by them the author wants to express various states of soul. Names of these works refer to spiritual spheres: "Disengagement of the Soul", "God's Protection", or simply "The soul". - "Departure from materialistic thinking and full immersion into own inward mind" - this is how he characterizes himself at the turn of the 20s and 30s. In his studio, commercial activities are directed to portraiting prominent and popular personalities. In these portraits he makes use of his unique capacity of psychological empathy, formally well-thought of composition and illumination, which single out his work from products of other studios. In 1925, he exhibits his works at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Applied Arts (Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs & Industriels Modernes) where he is awarded with an honorable mention. In 1935, when Drtikol closes his studio as well as his photographic work, a publication called Formes Nues (Editions d'Art Graphique et Photographique) with the luxurious make-up is issued in Paris, in which Drtikol's works are highly appraised by their comparison with works of Dora Maar, Brassai, L. Mohola-Nagy and Man Ray.

His craving for truth led him to eastern philosophies, into areas so remote as the world of Cabbala and Buddhism where he sought for and found an artistic language of his own. Although he left the photography, it becomes a tool to transform his imagination.

He dies forgotten in 1961. The concern in his work comes to life in the second half of the 70s and has been gradually increasing ever since. The work that he made attracts up to these days with its originality, depth of idea and visually cultured impression.