This impressive landscape painting by Václav Špála captures a view toward the interior of a fully grown pine forest in full summer light. It was painted during the painter’s stay in Pyšely, to which he repeatedly returned in the summer months. Although his wartime and postwar work is primarily associated with still lifes featuring fruit and flowers, he gradually created a number of effective plein air works during several holidays there. The composition of the listed canvas opens with a thin trunk on the left edge, which frames the scene vertically and draws the viewer’s gaze to the luminous clearing at the centre of the painting. Deep, refracted tones of green rhythmically alternate with the white of the flowering bushes and rays of light, which permeate between the trunks towards the darker horizon. In the background, above a dark rampart of trees, a blue sky with distinctive white clouds appears. Špála’s characteristic style was dynamic; he applied painting in expressive strokes that cross in different directions and create a changing visual rhythm. In the Forest is proof that even in the 1940s, the painter had not slackened in his efforts; his painterly expressivity was characterised by a free use of colour and the ability to turn an intimate slice of nature into a strong artistic experience.

The stamp on the canvas’s verso speaks to the significance of the painting and confirms that in the immediate aftermath of the war, it was lent for one of the group exhibitions of modern Czech painting organised by the Ministry of Information, then led by Václav Kopecký. The work appears in Špála’s own inventory under no. 1397 in double brackets (E. Burget / R. Musil: Václav Špála, soupis díla /1885–1946/, Prague: 2002, p. 125, with the entry “A Piece of the Forest Interior (it was with Jiřík)”). It remained in the artist’s studio during his lifetime. Assessed in consultation with J. Zemina and PhDr. R. Michalová, Ph.D. The expert opinion of PhDr. K. Srp is attached: “[...] Even if it seems that the impact of the painting is quite immediate, the way in which Špála has conceived this motif corresponds precisely to his direct, sophisticated view; it is not in any way random. [...].”