Compass and Strainer Photogram
- Artist: György Kepes
- Date: n.d
- Medium: Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
- Dimensions: image: 239 x 200 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Compass and Strainer Photogram” by György Kepes. Kepes was a Hungarian‑born artist who moved to the United States in 1937 and soon after worked with László Moholy‑Nagy at the Bauhaus‑inspired New Bauhaus in Chicago. He pioneered the photogram technique—placing objects directly on photosensitive paper and exposing it to light, producing a silhouette that is simultaneously scientific and artistic.
In this piece, a compass and a kitchen strainer cast their dark outlines onto the gelatin‑silver paper. The result is a minimalist, almost abstract image that reveals how everyday objects become symbols of measurement and geometry. Kepes used these studies to explore light, surface texture and the formal qualities of shape, themes that would recur throughout his later work in design and environmental art.
The print, created in the late 1930s to early 1940s, showcases Kepes’s blend of social consciousness, interest in the formal, and a fascination with how light records reality.
See it in person
Compass and Strainer Photogram is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
