The Reader

Dating from 1930, The Reader is among the most significant works by Emil Filla, a key figure in Czech Modernism and a leading exponent of Cubism. The work was created after he had reached full creative maturity and evolved from an earlier affiliation with analytic Cubism to an original expressive synthesis increasingly dominated by figurative motifs, along with an expansive colour palette and large formats. While he continued to paint Cubist still lifes through 1929, the next year brought about a fundamental change in subject matter and women sitting in chairs – sometimes idly relaxing, sometimes with a mandolin or a book – became as important subjects as his variously structured still lifes. Cubism gave way to a more expressive style that became something of a precursor to the surrealist compositions of subsequent years. Large, deeply-coloured surfaces and bold, mostly black lines play an essential role in the visual composition of these works, with simplified object forms transformed into new shapes that had more in common with the later, so-called lyrical Cubism, a style that had, by then, ceased to be Cubism in any strict sense and retained only traces of its multi-perspectival approach.

The Reader possesses all of these traits. The composition depicts a young female nude in a chair with an open book in her hand. While the pastel colour palette gives the impression of intimacy, the artist depicts it with geometric shapes, stylising the structure of the woman as anthropomorphic furniture. So connected is her body to the chair that organic corporeal forms grow into the chair’s architecture, freely passing into the flatly rendered background. Elements of the interior, the chair’s upholstery, and the wallpaper are composed of repetitive, stylised motifs in the basic contrasting colours of blue and red. Filla thus intentionally arrived at an internal disharmony, which is softened, despite its Cubist style, by a lyrical expressivity that makes it appear accessible and offers the viewer a unique sensory experience.

Filla included the painting in the exhibition organised at Mánes for his fiftieth birthday: Jubilee Exhibition of the Works of Emil Filla, Mánes Association of Fine Artists, Prague, May 1932, cat. no. 157. The exhibition then continued in Brno: Emil Filla: A Comprehensive Exhibition of Paintings, organised by Skupina V. U., House of Arts, Brno, October 1932, cat. no. 55. The artist’s number F 142 appears in red pencil on the stretcher frame at the back of the painting, along with a stamp from the 1932 Mánes exhibition. The work comes from an important Prague collection. The authenticity has been confirmed by the Filla Foundation, and the painting will be included in an inventory of works currently in preparation. Assessed in consultation with Prof. J. Zemina and Mgr. T. Mátl Donné. The expert opinion of PhDr K. Srp is attached: “[...] The nude reader is situated at the beginning of Filla’s interest in erotic motifs, which led to a collaboration with Jindřich Štyrský in publishing Erotická revue (The Erotic Revue). If we consider the painting from the point of view of Filla’s work from the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, it can be designated as a seminal work, in which expressive inputs penetrate the Cubist morphology. [...].”