Lot 138

Adriena Šimotová (1926 - 2014) A TABLE FOR ANGELS

Adriena Šimotová’s A Table for Angels was included in the Czech Light and Spirit exhibition in Spain, where the artist presented three “table” installations (A Table from Somewhere, A Magic Table and A Table for Angels). Various iterations of both subjects, whether the table (as a place for rituals and meetings) or angels (our guides and messengers of God), were treated often in her work. Multifaceted work with the nature of an image and the opportunities presented by visual communication were also basic elements in Šimotová’s work. At the turn of the 1970s, after she, as a respected painter, abandoned traditional painting, the defining moments of her art form became perforation, transparency, and layering. She applied frottage in a unique way in her works when depicting people and objects, and worked with stencils, photography and its transforming role in relation to the individual or collective memory.

Adriena Šimotová was one of the most respected figures in Czech art and culture in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Born in a Czech-French family connected with the Masarykian traditions of the First Czechoslovak Republic, she studied at the School of Applied Arts in Prague under Josef Kaplický, where she also met her later husband, Jiří John, a distinguished printmaker and painter. They belonged to the UB 12 art group alongside Václav Boštík, Stanislav Kolíbal, Věra Janoušková and Vladimír Janoušek, Alena Kučerová and others. Adriena Šimotová received many awards for her work in her native country and abroad. Her works are represented in the Albertina and mumok in Vienna, Bibliotheque National and Centre Pompidou in Paris, and in Florence, Geneva, Washington D.C., Chicago and many other galleries and private collections.

Restored and filled, consulted with Mgr. Pavel Brunclík from the Adriena Šimotová and Jiří John Foundation.