Lot 74

Jan Slavíček (1900 - 1970) FROM THE FRENCH RIVIERA

This is an original, enchanting and very rare work by Jan Slavíček, an artist who is one of the characteristic exponents of the generation born around 1900. This generation brought an avant-garde spark and a new sensual relationship towards reality to Czech art. As PhDr. Rea Michalová, PhD explains in her expert assessment, “Slavíček’s oeuvre is divided into landscape art, still lifes, and a number of smaller as well as monumental paintings of Prague. In his landscapes he drew inspiration from the Eagle Mountains (Orlická Rybná) and his frequent trips abroad. This painting represents one of the brilliant results of Slavíček’s residence in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Côte d'Azur in the spring of 1925. This was the first of the famous foreign tours undertaken by Otakar Nejedlý’s landscape painting class. (...) It is beautiful evidence of the crystallization of Slavíček’s artistic style, in the spirit of his belief that ‘the greatest poetry and beauty is stored in facts, in nature, in reality – it is only necessary to discover it there and know how to express it in a painting’. In France the artist fully surrenders to the charm of Mediterranean nature, but he tames his intense painterly temper with artistic order, fully balancing matter and graduated plains of terrain. The refined landscape format gives full voice to the motif he has chosen, captured with a mastery of color and application that is reminiscent of the French classics Corot, Courbet, and especially a painter current at the time, André Derain. From the French Riviera is an immensely beautiful work by Slavíček, exuding inner peace and human harmony with a landscape of ‘almost magical color … and pious devotion’ (J. Slavíček).”

Restored.