Lot 141

Stanislav Kolíbal (1925) LANDSCAPE WITH A TRAIN LINE

The work comes from the early and very rare period of the world-famous Czech artist, sculptor and architect Stanislav Kolíbal. After the German occupation, he moved from his native Orlová in the Těšín region to Ostrava, where he was deployed to work in the mines at the end of the war. The author writes about his work from the 1940s: "Although it is mostly landscape, it is not a landscape painting, but experiences in different seasons, in different moods, mostly from the same place - namely from the window of our apartment. The fact that nobody could watch me while I was working gave me the opportunity to have my first experience with colours. Some of the watercolours were based on footage from our neighbourhood. They were never exhibited or reproduced." Kolíbal has been modelling and drawing since he was thirteen. In 1943 (at the age of eighteen) he exhibited in a group show at the House of Art in Ostrava.
In the present work, the landscape can be observed as something pulsating, with an almost sculptural modelling of the terrain. We see the geometry of paths and slats rising from the ground, as if they were defining the space of one large land-art. Stanislav Kolíbal's work is represented in the collections of several international museums and galleries, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum and Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London and MUMOK in Vienna.