Brno City Museum is one of the Czech Republic’s oldest museums with an architecture collection. Among other things, the museum’s files on interwar architecture contain original plans and photographic documentation related to Villa Tugendhat.
In 2012, this set of plans and photographs was further expanded by a generous gift from a private collector, who donated 42 unique photographs of the villa to the museum’s Department of Architectural History. These unique photographs of the home of Grete and Fritz Tugendhat were taken by Rudolf Sandalo Jr., an established Brno artist and owner of the Atelier de Sandalo, who is known for his many photographs of modern Czechoslovak architecture. Although the museum has owned reproductions of most of Sandalo’s images of Villa Tugendhat for more than half a century, the donation of the original positives represents a valuable addition to its collection.
Today, Rudolf Sandalo Jr.’s photographs are considered unique examples not only of outstanding interwar architecture, but also of the excellent quality of its photographic documentation in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s. Sandalo’s work is one of the largest and most valuable sets of photographic documentation in the museum’s architecture collection, and is greatly valued both at home and abroad.
