Václav Špála (1885–1946)

The painter Václav Špála is one of the most important figures in Czech prewar and interwar art. He has earned this privileged position due to his sensitivity in working with shades of colour and enormous talent for reducing shapes to surfaces through the use of soft brushwork. 

 

Špála began his unique art career at the School of Artistic Metalworking in Hradec Králové, where he built upon private instruction with F. Engelmüller, and later studied in Prague at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design and the Academy of Fine Arts, under professors F. Theile and V. Bukovac (1903–1908). Like many of his contemporaries and eventual colleagues, his early work drew inspiration from works by the celebrated group Osma (The Eight) and, above all, from international artists of the time (E. Munch, P. Cézanne, V. van Gogh), which he encountered on travels throughout Europe. His early work thus shows the refinement of his own personal style as he mastered the art of Expressionism, early Cubism and Fauvism. The last of these styles proved important for him, and he reshaped it in a personal, highly sensual form. His approach to depicting the female nude and the motifs of bathing, laundresses and rural women is among the most radical in Czech art. In 1911, Špála created Idyll (Two Girls Bathing) – the painting in which he first employed his characteristic combination of two contrasting and balanced colours: warm red and cool blue. This attractive colour combination (which he worked with until 1923) was inspired by a childhood memory from the countryside, where women wore red petticoats with blue blouses. In subsequent years, he exhibited with The Obstinate (Tvrodšíjní) group and also became a member of the Mánes Association of Fine Artists. 

 

After the war, particularly between 1923 and 1926, Špála’s attention turned to modern and dynamic landscapes in a broad range of greens (his so-called green period). However, the pinnacle of his painterly endeavours to capture nature was his subsequent blue period, when he enjoyed playing with all shades of blue and gradually turned to painting bouquets and still lifes. Around 1927, he became deeply absorbed by the landscape of South Bohemia, particularly the area around Písek – most notably the Zvíkov Castle vicinity, where the Otava River flows into the Vltava. Here, Špála’s search for a harmony of colour culminated with the dominance of a glowing blue pigment enriched with a palette of warm red tones and a calming of expressive painterly lines and surfaces. The works he painted in Dalmatia in the mid-1930s are particularly unique and attractive for collectors; abounding in optimism, they are an excellent depiction of the holiday seaside atmosphere. With the advent of World War II, Špála retreated into himself, often painting Cézanne-esque fruit or floral still lifes, as he sought new expressive pathways for his richly evolving body of work.