Lot 158
Josef Lada (1887 - 1957) ON THE FIELD

1938
Pencil, watercolour, gouache, cardboard
33,5 x 48,5 cm (h x w)
Lower right "Jos. Lada 38"

Starting price
380 000 CZK
   |   15 510 €
Price realized
550 000 CZK
   |   22 449 €
price without premium

From the expert opinion of PhDr. Pavla Pečinková, CSc .: "This specific, modest color combination combining pencil with watercolor and white is strongly represented in Lada's work, especially at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s. Lada mentions pencil contours as a way to a more vivid painterly expression in the commemorative book Chronicle of My Life (“I could only look for the possibility of further development by using softer material such as chalk or pencil ”). Until the mid-1930s, Lada basically sought the optimal position of expression between drawing and painting. He doesn't want to give up his linear stylization and basically still draws his paintings. Several studies with motifs from the Czech countryside have been preserved in the estate, which can be assigned to the then program line of Umělecká beseda. However, open-air painting and the traditional academic technique of oil painting did not suit Lada, so he remained with his proven means. His original concept, in which he fully applied his drawing experience, significantly enriched the expressive register of contemporary Czech landscape painting. "