Lot 133

Václav Špála (1885 - 1946) BOUQUET NEAR SÁZAVA RIVER BEFORE STORM

From the expert opinion of PhDr. Rea Michalová Ph.D.: "The submitted work "Bouquet on the Sázava before the storm" is an original, high-quality, dazzlingly vitalistic and motif-typical work by Václav Špála, a member of the progressive-oriented Group of Visual Artists, the Tvrdošijní group, a member and later chairman of SVU Mánes, one of the most prominent representatives of the Czech artistic avant-garde. Václav Špála painted the considered painting "Bouquet on Sázava before the storm" in a happy and successful period, when he was fifty years old. The flowers, depicted as a central motif in the considered painting, symbolized to Václav Špála beauty, freshness, brightness and well-being of life. Focusing on this seemingly simple subject resulted quite naturally from his intense interest in nature. In one of his reflections, he confessed how he is inspired again and again by the summer landscape, fragrant flowers in a vase or still life with fruit, how he emotionally experiences color and connects it with memory and music. It was a powerful wave of vitalism on which his entire work was carried and which also fully "The bouquet on Sázava before the storm" permeates the painting.