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Pastel on paper. Signed upper right: “K. Černý, Paris 47”. This dark nighttime urban landscape dates to a period when the artist was enchanted with France, a country he regularly visited in 1946–49. After he returned, he painted Cubist-influenced still lifes and nighttime landscapes that captured the sense of loneliness. An excellent painter, in the 1940s he was called one of the most talented painters of his generation by Jindřich Chalupecký. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he studied under Jakub Obrovský. In his early work, Černý was primarily influenced by Preisler's melancholy, resonating with the hardship the artist had experienced during his lifetime. He drew with pen and ink, charcoal and color pastels, predominantly in tones of violet, blue, green, grey, black and brown. The influence of Expressionism is evident in his later works. He had 28 solo exhibitions. He participated in his first group exhibition in Paris in 1946 at La Böethie; since then, his works have been represented at all major exhibitions in his native country (Mánes Union of Fine Artists, shows of Czechoslovak fine art) and abroad – in São Paulo (1957), the Venice Biennale (1958), Expo 58 in Brussels (1958), Helsinki (1959), Bucharest and Budapest (1962), Moscow (1966) and Berlin (1969). His paintings are in the National Gallery in Prague, Moravian Gallery in Brno, and in most regional art galleries.