Lot 146

Oldřich Kerhart (1895 - 1947) AT THE STATION

Composition of characters on the platform in sociable interviews, portrayed by Oldřich Kerhart, offers an urban landscape scene in harmonious color chords. Realistically separated platforms are created on a relatively static theme, and the figures in sociable conversations stand in a way that the observer expects the train to arrive at any moment. In the distance, flowering horse chestnut trees indicate the arrival of spring and steel-gray clouds of the coming rain. Painter, typographer, illustrator and playwright Oldřich Kerhart (1895 Poděbrady –1947 Prague) graduated from high school in Nymburk in 1914. Until 1918 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under Professor Jan Preisler, but he never completed his studies. He traveled throughout Italy and Yugoslavia, and visited Corsica, Sicily and Paris. From 1920 he participated in Umělecká Beseda exhibitions, and the UB magazine Život presented reproductions of his paintings in 1921–1922. In 1942 he was made chairman of Umělecká Beseda. Collected exhibitions of Oldřich Kerhart's oeuvre were held at Aleš Hall in 1928 and 1939. The landscape around the Bohemian Elbe (Labe) River valley is a favorite theme in his paintings.