oil, sololite, 36,6 × 44,3 cm, frame, signed in pencil bottom right F. GROSS
Professionally restored. Since the 1940s, when František Gross was one of the leading representatives of the Group 42, the main theme of his paintings became the poetics of urban periphery, especially in connection with working machines. These are in his paintings soon began to merge with the human figure into the fantasy-like mechanical beings. The theme of robots and cyborgs had already fascinated interwar modernity, which imagined a utopian coexistence of humans
and machines as a result of the technical progress of civilization. Gross's machine
beings appear as complicated systems of many parts, gears, levers and wheels that are connected by various screws and joints. If the could move, they would have to make the sounds of gears and gears tipping of the arms setting the parts in motion one by one, like the machine sculptures of Jean Tinguely, the great Swiss artist and founder of kineticism, to which Gross's machine-beings are close. Their vibrant colouring, their drawing abbreviation, based on the cubic
morphology, and the figurative character of the machines also bring them closer to the aesthetics of pop art.
František Gross (1909-1985), painter and graphic artist, studied at the Czech Technical University in Prague Oldřich Blažíček and the Academy of Arts and Crafts under prof. František Kysela. In 1942-1948 he was a member of the Group 42, from 1945, a member of the Hollar association and in 1961-1970 of the Radar group. The work of František Gross is represented in important collections of the Czech art of the 20th century.
