12 Josef Čapek 1887 – 1945 Parisienne, 1910–1911

Signed in pencil lower right J. Č. Paříž. 26.4 × 21.2 cm, drawing, charcoal, paper slightly damaged, mat, frame, glass. 

Expert opinion by PhDr. Rea Michalová Ph.D. attached. 

Provenance: The work comes from a significant Moravian collection.

The assessed work, "Parisian Woman" (Pařížanka), is an original, rare collector's item, executed with a fully modern and graphically masterful approach. It was created during the author’s initial several-month stay in Paris. It is a work by Josef Čapek, an outstanding artist of European significance and an indispensable founding figure of Czech modern art.

The work "Parisian Woman" represents a rare piece from the small collection of Čapek's drawings created directly in the Mecca of modern art between autumn 1910 and summer 1911. This was a key period for the advent of the artistic avant-garde, and sometimes, as is the case here, the piece "proudly" points directly to its Parisian provenance in the signature.

The pre-war formative nine-month stay in the French capital, which was envied by the entire Devětsil avant-garde (in the words of Karel Teige: "…the fact that the Čapeks were there when Cubism started in Paris was unforgivable, and that is why they had our respect. They knew Matisse, Picasso, and Apollinaire!"), led to the painter's extraordinary human and artistic maturation.

Josef Čapek approached this unique life experience with exceptional honesty. He enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where Otto Gutfreund had studied the year before. The presented drawing was created precisely there, notable for its synthetic, energetic character, which brings it close to the early drawings of artists such as Henri Matisse or André Derain. Although it is monochromatic, it can be described as Fauvist in the way it treats the line and the summarily observed graceful bodily forms of the charming model.