Provenance:
Swiss Private Collection, acquired directly from the artist;
Swiss Private Property.

Expertise:
We are grateful to Adéla Procházková and Eva Kosáková for their confirmation of authenticity by email of the present work of art and their kind assistance in cataloguing.

The work of art will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist.

Human fate, human existence in its tragic, picturesque and painful reality - this is the essential theme of Mikuláš Medek's oeuvre.
At the beginning of his artistic career, the Czech artist (1926-1974) found in Surrealism a suitable attitude to discuss the issues that preoccupied him. In ambiguous, sometimes ironic pictorial compositions with elongated bodies and strong coloring, he, who was in constant conflict with the communist dictatorship, discusses how the human psyche deals with repression, violence and a lack of perspective.
At the end of the 1950s, Medek's oeuvre underwent a change from figurative surrealism to abstract painting. The artist combines organic, microscopic forms with abstract geometric elements and symbols, accentuating the compositions with a mystical darkness of colors. Medek's painting style develops into a complex and lengthy process during this phase. In several layers, he applies paint for weeks to the large-format canvases. He treats the paint layer and the colour like something alive: he works, scratches and perforates them intensively with a spatula, knife, brush and fingernails. The painting Zranění žluté barvy (Injuries of Yellow Colour) from 1965 illustrates the haunting effect of this painting process. The traces of devastation give the surface of the painting a relief-like appearance and the suffering is transferred to the yellow-gold colour, creating a cosmos with painful and mysterious dimensions.
Medek: "A painting is a kind of sensitive surface touched by a psychic event that, continuing the process of movement, leaves behind it an objective report of its existence within a system of tracks and impressions."¹
His abstract surrealism served the artist as a refuge from tormenting ideas and the threats of life, the painting process as a kind of catharsis. He remained faithful to his artistic and moral compass even in a totalitarian environment hostile to modern art and intellectual freedom. In his relatively short life, Mikuláš Medek created an oeuvre that was inspiring for future generations of artists and, with its independence, is one of the most important positions in Czech visual art of the 20th century.

¹Mikulás Medek, in: Exhibition catalogue. Bohumir Mraz, Mikulas Medek, Prag 1970, page 44.