Grapes in Basket

During the 1920s, still lifes engaging all of the senses became characteristic of the work of Antonín Procházka, a representative of the founding generation of Czech modern art. From the mid-1920s, Procházka retreated from Cubism and inclined towards the classicism of Civilism and a more naïve poetics. Similarly to Emil Filla, the motif of the still life played an important role in his work. He executed it with an original approach in the listed painting Grapes in Basket. Liberating everyday objects from the earlier Cubist abstraction, he approached them with a new sensory immediacy. He paid particular attention to encaustic, which he used to achieve a specific plasticity and lighting effect. Practiced since antiquity, this technique of painting with wax and pigment not only offered him a chance for formal experimentation, but an organic combination of tradition with modern artistic expression; thanks to this, the painted objects attain an almost magical quality of light. Like the napkin, curtain, and basket with grapes, the author has elevated the glass, plate, and fork to objects of great aesthetic contemplation. Grapes in Basket represents a paramount example of Procházka’s Civilism, where an interest in everyday things is combined with refined painterly execution. Here, his concept of the still life achieves a synthesis between formal excellence and an emotional impact on the viewer. Assessed in consultation with Prof. J. Zemina and Ing. V. Bartoš. The expert opinion of PhDr. R. Michalová, Ph.D. is attached: “[...] The listed painting Grapes in Basket is excellent and dignified work by Procházka’s, who logically completed his development over the course of the 1920s, when his new interest in ‘attributes of the everyday’ liberated the subjects of the still life from the limitations of an abstract, cubist composition, made them independent and gave them a leading role. Here we reach the culminating phase of Procházka’s ‘magical,’ emotionally fervent and primitive Civilism. [...].”