12BohumírMatal1922 – 1988Man in the City, City in Man, 1947
Man in the City, City in Man, 1947
Dimensions
Short item description
signed in pencil bottom right Matal 47., watercolour, paper, 16,5 × 11 cm, mount,
frame, glass
Consulted with Mgr. Martina Šviková.For the young, exceptionally talented artist Bohumír Matal, who
at the age of 23, became a member of Group 42, whose paintings were immediately
in Paris at an exhibition of the most important young artists of Czechoslovakia
and already in 1947 he had his first solo exhibition in the representative
House of Art in Brno, the world changed after February 1948. His paintings
were not even remotely close to the directive, constructionist
optimism, and all of his work to date has been labeled as
an undesirable and dangerous pro-Western formalism that must be combated
and which should have no place in the exhibitions of the new socialist state.
For a painter who spent part of the war in the harsh conditions of the labour camps,
...the crushing weight of the totalitarian system was once again upon him. Matal was forced to retreat to
the seclusion of his studio and began to seek security in his paintings in the traditional
motifs of portraits, self-portraits, still lifes, flowers or views of the city, in
in which references to modernist painting were often mixed with new
elements and symbols.
#24024257
auction 66
66th auction of Fine Art, Antiques, Design and Glass
Information at aukce@sypka.cz, mob. 608 958 322.
