Lot 149

Antonín Kybal (1901 - 1971) AUTUMN

Antonín Kybal's path to his unique artistic expression was rather thorny. The son of a merchant and former co-owner of a textile manufactory was expected to continue the family tradition. However, Antonín Kybal secretly enrolled at UMPRUM, where he excelled in Josef Mařatka's sculpture studio. The exploration of painting did not take long either. Through painting, Antonín Kybal explored colour relationships, optics, and the expressive effectiveness of pictorial surfaces, and then applied this knowledge to the textile work for which he became famous. He did not have much confidence in painting as such and, with a few exceptions, never exhibited his works. The work Autumn comes from the artist's family and finds a visual affinity in the solutions of the realized works Summer (a modern realization based on a design from 1964) and Autumn (a curtain for the Czechoslovak Cultural Centre in Cairo, 1959).