Lot 45

Oldřich Koníček (1886 - 1932) VISTA OF CARLSBAD

Painted with fresh style, this landscape with a panoramic view of Carlsbad is the work of painter Oldřich Koníček. Born to the family of Kutná Hora lawyer František Koníček, Oldřich Koníček entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1906 and in as early as 1908 he was exhibiting his early Impressionist works. His watershed year was 1911, when Koníček first visited Paris; his art entirely transformed and he started to paint in the style of Post-impressionism. He particularly studied the work of Cezanne, Derain, Matisse and Friesz. An officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Koníček spent World War I on the Serbian front. After returning to his home, the new Czechoslovak Ministry of National Defense dispatched him to Italy to paint the major battlefields where the Czechoslovak legionnaires had fought. In the 1920s he exhibited frequently in Prague, elsewhere in the country and abroad, and in the period press he enjoyed critical claim from Karel Teige, Josef Čapek and Jaromír Pečírka. In the first half of the 1920s Koníček’s work veered towards Neoclassicism, gaining inspiration from the paintings of Renaissance and Neoclassical painters. The final stage in his oeuvre is connected with a digression from the meaning of lines, with the expression of the painting conveyed through harmonious and expressive color. Landscape and figurative paintings are predominant.