Blazing Glow

70% of the hammer price is allocated to support the non-profit foundation Spolu s odvahou, a member of the Bátor Tábor Family.

Matěj Macháček’s paintings are recognizable at first glance by their characteristically intense, saturated, and expressive colors, which betray the artist’s studies in the painting studio of Professor Michael Rittstein at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Macháček works with large-format paper surfaces mounted on canvas, which he covers with ink paintings in combination with acrylic paints. This process is inspired by Chinese art techniques, which Macháček was able to learn directly during his studies in Taiwan, where he has since returned multiple times. Recently his paintings have mainly depicted cut-outs or fragments of natural and urban landscapes, focusing on the fleeting moment of his immediate impression of them—on atmosphere, light, and the play of shadows. Combined with bright neon colors, the scenes turn into a kind of dreamlike glimpse into a symbolic environment. The painting Blazing Glow was created specifically for this auction. It builds on a loose series of paintings of an exotic, radiant blue tree in a Taiwanese landscape, with the blue color intensely deepening the relationship between the depicted object and human emotion.