Urban Landscape

In Urban Landscape, a quite rare painting due to its theme, Šíma depicts the Saint-Denis quarter in Paris, approaching it in a style typical of his postwar oeuvre. The work was created in 1954, after ten years of creative silence, when the painter renewed his relationship with sensory reality and returned to some extent to specific landscapes and urban motifs that he transformed with his unique worldview. The painting is built on Karel Teige’s principle of a synthesis of “structure and poetry,” harmoniously merging civilisation with nature, as modern architectural elements contrast with the dematerialised planes of the landscape. Compositionally, the work references Šíma’s internal polemic with modernist Constructivism, which he approached with “platonic love,” and is particularly evident in relation to the project Radiant City by Le Corbusier, which offered a new vision of collective living shortly before the creation of this painting. The subtle tension between the rational construction and urgent, sensual colour surfaces – radiant ochres and green tones with accents of red on the roof of the solitary house in the foreground – offer a glimpse of the artist’s philosophy concerning the relationship between architecture and nature. This dialogue between geometric order and the organic movement of the landscape mirrors the painter’s life-long search for harmony between the spiritual essence and sensorial experience of the world. The canvas is characterised by a distinctive, dematerialised vision of the unity of the universe, toward which the author strove throughout his life. It was precisely during the post-war period that he formulated his style with new intensity and inner calm. It is in harmony with the values of global modern art that resist classification into narrow categories of individual artistic movements, mirroring Šíma’s position during the height of Surrealism, a movement whose doctrine he never fully embraced.

At the time of its making, the painting was presented at the artist’s solo exhibition at Galerie Kléber (19 April – 7 May 1955, no cat. nos.). The artist’s second showcase with this gallerist, it became a milestone, infusing his postwar work with new energy and bringing him to the attention of the French public. With this exhibition, Šíma confirmed his position as one of the most noteworthy Czech painters of the twentieth century, capable of actively contributing to the international art scene with work surpassing his younger colleagues in its innovativeness and timelessness. Assessed in consultation with PhDr. J. Zemina and PhDr. R. Michalová, PhD. The expert opinion of PhDR. K. Srp, is attached: “[...] This painting shows how important he found the subject matter of the suburb, where construction was growing or expanding into the empty landscape. This painting is also inspired by a specific place. It was apparently the Saint-Denis quarter in Paris [...] The assessed painting is a significant help in understanding the development of Šíma’s work in the period from 1953 to 1955, about which very little has been known until now. The painting is distinguished by Šíma’s typical colour palette of bright ochres and greens and his restrained relationship to more striking colours, such as red, which he uses on the roof of the single house in the foreground. [...].”