Lot 100

Alfred Justitz (1879 - 1934) STILL LIFE WITH APPLES, BREAD AND PIPE

From the expert opinion of Rea Michalová, PhD, as part of Trinity Art Research: 'Alfred Justitz, a gentle observer of life, things and nature, a quiet thinker with a kind of predestined fascination with the magic of Old Testament stories, is today recognised as one of the most artistically and humanly pure representatives of the founding generation of Czech modern art. The present painting "Still Life with Apples, Bread and Pipe" can be described as a work of painterly sovereignty that bears the hallmarks of Justitz's painterly expression of the second half of the 1920s. At that time, the artist stood at the beginning of his creative peak, armed with talent, experience and immeasurable will. Numerous analogies can be found both in the subjects, with which the artist repeatedly manipulated in pictorial terms, and in the painterly treatment of the present work and other works from this period - be it structural scraping or linear contours, which bring an extraordinary optical richness and freshness to the work. The back side bears a label from the Gallery of Fine Arts Olomouc with the inventory number O-1044 on the blindframe. The painting was kept as a confiscate until 1992, when it was removed from the MUO collection in accordance with legal regulations. The handwritten inscription "Grmela" undoubtedly refers to the original owner of the work. PhDr. Jan Grmela was a librarian, prose writer, poet, translator from German and director of the Municipal Library in Prague from 1942 to 1945. During his era, the library was hiding books that were forcibly removed from the collection, of which he was probably aware. After the end of the fighting in 1945, he was brought before the Revolutionary Court. He collected sculptures and paintings, and his collection included works by Špála, Filly and Šaloun." A detailed expert restoration, art historical and X-ray fluorescence analysis has been carried out on the work.