Oil on canvas, 51 × 60,5 cm, double-sided painting and frame, lower left Sýkora 69,
original frame attachedFrom the opinion of PhDr. Magdalena Juříková
Zdeněk Sýkora is known to art connoisseurs and art lovers primarily for his
as a painter of geometric abstraction and later a pioneer of some
computer methods in art. Landscape also stood at the beginning of his
phenomenal career as a programmatic method to gain artistic certainty
/Cézanne/. Sýkora himself, however, never considered landscape painting as a
relaxation or a retreat from the progressive practices he was proposing. For
for him, it was always and under all circumstances an important source of renewal
human and artistic strength and fulfilled his constant need for open
and free space. His relationship to the landscape was not one of romantic admiration; it has
a certain amount of analytical approach, which is also characteristic of his
Constructivist, geometric and conceptual work.
The study of his work equipped him with a reliable apparatus for further experimentation, nor
But he did not stop taking lessons from it later on. He approached each of the scenes
without a defining stylistic starting point, leaving the landscape alone.
dictate the resulting pictorial means.
The Ohře River near Počedelice is one of Sýkor's constant themes, which he has long
enthusiastically observed and directly transformed in the plein air into
the surface of the canvas. At the end of the 1960s, the painterly character of his landscapes
was changing. The vibrant composition of pastel colours from the period around 1960 is replaced by
loosely and smoothly applied, muted, refracted colours, which he also uses to model
shapes. Occasionally, they spill out sunlight in a glint on the surface, reds
on the horizon or the autumn yellow leaves of the poplars. The surfaces are summarised in colour.
He no longer distinguishes many coloured shades of light in them, his gaze
visibly integrates the different elements of the landscape/trees, meadows, the surface of the river/
into aggregate monumental shapes. Although the painting is essentially a flat
designed, the brushstrokes and shadows and lights strongly model the surfaces.
In the catalogue of an exhibition devoted exclusively to the landscape work of Z. Sýkora,
which took place last year at the Art Gallery in Karlovy Vary, is
depicts a pandanus for the painting under consideration, which shows approximately
same place on the Ohře River, but from the opposite bank /see attachment/,
from a private collection. The painting process is comparable, but differs
only in the light atmosphere.
The significance of this work, characterised by the colourful atmosphere of the landscape
before sunset is evidenced by its forthcoming inclusion in the third volume
of the author's extensive monographic cycle, which is being prepared for
for print and is devoted exclusively to landscape painting.
Prague, 5 May 2011
A constructively oriented, geometric abstract work by
Zdeněk Sýkora initiated in the Czech environment since the early 1960s,
including the pioneering method associated with the use of computer programs
generating specifications for the image form, had a counterbalance in landscape painting,
to which Sýkora returned throughout his creative career.
It was landscape painting, painting en plein air, especially in the familiar
familiar environment of Louny, the Ohře River with its motifs of meadows and forest corners, which
that led him in the fifties to abstract and create an autonomous
artwork without any connection to the reality he saw. A rationalized, constructive
Sýkora's work did not mean a rejection of nature. Returns to
landscape and spontaneous painterly expression with an emphasis on sensory qualities
of colour provided Sýkora with a space to test and explore the relationship between
the seen and the created as a purely creative process, in which he always re
defined the relationship of color surfaces, volumes, shapes and proportions in the pictorial
space.
#23023773
auction 63
63rd auction of Fine Art, Antiques, Design and Glass
Information at aukce@sypka.cz, mob. 608 958 322.
