Lot 185

Josef Šíma (1891 - 1971) PAYSAGE LUMINEUX

From the expert opinion of PhDr. Rea Michalová Ph.D: "The presented painting "Light landscape (Paysage luminieux)" is an authentic, representative, all the author's painting and life experience summarizing the work of Josef Šíma, an artistic personality of world name and importance, an author who, together with František Kupka, is rightfully considered one of the greatest Czech painters of the twentieth century. In the late phase of his work, after 1950, Josef Šíma reached his second creative peak. The main theme of his new paintings and drawings became light, understood as a basic energetic matter and psychic reality. This light literally shines through the entire pictorial space in a new vision of unity, towards which Josef Šíma was aiming his whole life. The assessed painting "Light landscape (Paysage luminieux)" is one of Šíma's quality works from the phase of peak "creative wisdom", from the author's penultimate period in his work there is a synthesis and an organic connection of all the discoveries he has ever made. The quivering haze of light emanating from these basic geometric shapes spreads over the entire surface of the canvas, giving the impression that the painting is created from a volatile, vibrating energy. The dominance of ocher and brown tones is sophisticatedly contrasted in some places by a feeling cold green "nebula".