37KamilLhoták1912 – 1990Landscape with Boulders and the Říp, 1978
Landscape with Boulders and the Říp, 1978
Description of the period of creation in words
1978
Dimensions
Short item description
tempera on cardboard, 23,5 × 35 cm, mount, frame, glass, signed. bottom left Kamil Lhoták 78, 1978
The offered painting belongs to the mature period of Lhoták's work, in which he
the artist focused on the motif of the Czech landscape from the 1960s onwards. In it, he continued the previous civilian painting with themes of the urban periphery and the environment of pilgrimages, car and bicycle races, airship and balloon flights or motifs of planes, ships and submarines, which had been created since the 1940s, when Kamil Lhoták became one of the members of the wartime Group 42.The landscape of the Bohemian Central Highlands, which Lhoták repeatedly painted and drew, depicts specific places and well-known landscape points, although never created in the open air. It is often depicted as an empty, open space without people, in which it forms a stagecoach of some of Lhoták's favourite motifs - a flying inflatable balloon or a bird on the horizon, a cone, a target and objects from sports grounds that reveal a trace of human presence.
The landscape and the objects are real, but their combination creates a ghostly, unreal, magical space. It offers a scene of imaginative associations and a strange timelessness beyond ordinary reality.
Kamil Lhoták, painter, graphic designer and illustrator, embarked on his artistic career after studying law. His self-study led him to be inspired by the works of Henri Rousseau and Josef Šíma. From 1939 he was a member of the Art Discussion, from 1942 Group 42, an important group of artists with an urban orientation civilian poetics. From 1945 he was a member of the Hollar group. In 1954 he prepared the famous illustrations for Branald's book Grandfather the Automobile and was one of the pioneers of animation. In the sixties he approached the theme of New Figuration by incorporating concrete objects - targets, barrels or advertising signs - into his paintings. Lhoták's work represents a unique value of Czech post-war art. It is represented in important collections of Czech art Provenance: Purchased by the owner from the artist's studio.
