Lot 179

Jiří Rada (1929 - 2011) SILENT GARDEN

Jiří Rada belongs to the first generation of artists to enter the art scene after the Second World War. He studied at the Defence Jewellery School in Turnov and from 1950 to 1953 at the Prague Academy in the graphic specialty of Vladimír Pukl. In addition to his own artistic work, he also cultivated photography, illustration, worked as a reataurator and was a musician - a pianist. Together with many other artists of his generation, coming from various art schools, he co-founded the M57 Group, which, with a certain degree of freedom from Stalinist ideological dictates, sought to connect with the currents of international art and to re-establish free, politically unrestricted creation. The critics of the time noticed a certain simplicity and inner closedness in Jiří Rada's works, which is an expression of a deep experience of the world. The Quiet Garden from 1968 represents one of his key themes. Here, the painting's morphology is reduced and strongly abstracted, the subtle colouring is balanced by an energetically led and monumentalised line, and the whole evokes both intensity and concentration.