Lot 147

Karel Černý (1910 - 1960) SOUTH BOHEMIAN LANDSCAPE

The most characteristic feature of Karel Černý's work is a simplified form, often transformed into a symbolizing sign, capturing the essence of the rendered theme. None of his works were created randomly and easily. Karel Černý's art was not a matter of temperament. He often returns to the topic, getting to know him very closely until the form of the final realization emerges in his head. As stated in the expert assessment of PhDr. Rea Michalová PhD.: "Since his first solo exhibition in 1942 it was very clear that Karel Černý is a painter of a deep feeling and sharp sensuality where he subordinates distinctly subjective experience of reality to a fixed pictorial composition. Assessed painting "South Bohemian landscape" processed in the spirit of author's fierce subjectivism as a "landscape of the soul" is a great example of how artists created a "new poetry" during the war. It was exactly this poetry which helped people get over the pessimism of the Protectorate. Through symbol and metaphor, it was able to clearly attract the viewer. The absence of a human being seems like as if the painter replaced figures with the columns of the telegraph line, which, however, can also be read as a kind of crosses or stigmas, scars on the body - the landscape. Clouds, which Černý himself called "pancakes", have the function of an emotional symbol, which is the "microtheme" of the painting: it determines the tune and meaning. While in other authors' landscapes, the cloud is "as heavy as a boulder," in this work the clouds sway across the sky alone but very poetically. " Karel Černý did not allow himself to be carried away by his peers in his work. He created a symbolic-emotional language with firm rules full of strong contours and large areas of color. In his lonely being, he found increasingly striking means of expression and projected the tuning of his soul onto the paintings.