Bootycelli

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

Lucie Rosická is among the most distinctive young artists working with textiles and embroidery techniques. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she studied under Marek Meduna and Petr Dub in Painting Studio IV. Her work has long possessed strong autobiographical traits. The intimacy of her artworks stems not only from their diary-like character but also from the fact that she almost exclusively depicts her own body, using it to express hidden aspects of her own life, often through eroticized poses. Her interest in textiles was reinforced by an internship in Turin, Italy, where she grew more deeply familiar with the history of fashion and its materials. In her work she uses not only expensive fabrics but also those she finds in vintage shops or donated materials. The image Bootycelli captures the artist kneeling on a bed in front of a mirror and photographing her backside, which has flowers growing out of it. It is a blend of Rosická’s personal memories of traveling around Italy, her first awareness of Botticelli’s paintings, and the symbolism of fertility and health—which relates to the flowers in Botticelli’s paintings as well as to the fact that this work is a memory of the artist’s pregnancy. At the same time, it is a kind of artistic dialogue with the format of Instagram selfies. The image is made from three different fabrics—two types of velvet and a specific material reminiscent of neoprene. The latter was used for the drapery on the bed, while the rarest natural velvet was used to depict the flowers.