Lot 75

František Bílek (1872 - 1941) A PROPHET

The exceptional sculpture of the famous Czech symbolist artist František Bílek coexists with the multilayered and evolving idea of his spiritual work. It is a sketch of one of the Prophets, which was part of the project The Journey Called Zachariah, published in 1909. In the sculpture one can see a more optimistic vision of human destiny than we know from the artist's work. In the sculpture, we observe the rejection of the body as a "prison of the soul" in order to emphasize its connection with the cosmos, a release from oppressive matter that the gesticulation of a figure physiognomically resembling Christ directly invites, and that accompanies every spiritual quest. Around the perimeter at the bottom of the sculpture, made of stained patinated maple wood, is the text: "He - to whom heaven and earth listen." Much of the thinking about the relationship between decadence and religion is based on the work of Charles Baudelaire. His approach entailed a journey of dialogue and questioning; his challenge was the Christian God in the era of loss of certainty that the turn of the century represented.