Red Hot Pods

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

Kryštof Strejc is a prominent representative of the young generation of Czech figurative painters and a graduate of the Studio of Painting of Jiří Černický and Marek Meduna / Michal Novotný at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague. His expression is marked by bold and distinctive colors, a layering of surfaces, and considerable formal stylization. However, it is also characterized by a consistent iconography and the creation of thematic series that differ only very slightly in terms of color and composition. In the past Strejc strongly adhered to animal motifs with ancient symbolic layers, which he stylized into a decorative flatness, overlapping them in shallow planes. They appear on large canvases without clear spatial or narrative contexts, and the painter thus provides few clues as to their meaning. However, Strejc has recently made a significant shift toward a simplification of form and color, incorporating new symbolic motifs into his canvases. A typical example is the work Red Hot Pods from a series of seed paintings characterized by a distinctive painterly shorthand simplified to the very symbol itself. The emphasis on this symbolism is enhanced by the monochromatic background, which allows the motifs to stand out to maximum effect. For the artist, the seed is a symbol of potential—something that is small but has a whole world germinating within it, which is also germinating within us, whether we are aware of it or not.