Mikuláš Medek

Ladislav Kupkovič, Haste, Germany; thence by descent

Prague, Galerie Rudolfinum, Mikulás̆ Medek, 2002, n.n., illustrated in the catalogue

The canvas has not been lined. Ultra-violet light reveals some small areas which fluoresce dark, including towards the lower left corner and in the centre of the composition, attributable to the artist's technique rather than restoration. The work is in very good original condition and ready to hang. Presented in a narrow black frame.
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Executed in spring 1962, the time of year Medek preferred to paint, Décolletage is an intensely-worked example of Medek’s characteristic technique. For the artist’s biographer Bohumír Mráz, 1958 saw the beginning of Medek’s fourth period, with a developed use of synthetic enamel and highly idiosyncratic mark-making which remained characteristic of his work thereafter. Involving layers of paint being applied in a process of construction and destruction with spatula, knife, and even fingernails in the wet medium, the artist’s working methods recall the experimental technique of the Surrealists, notably Max Ernst, which inspired Medek’s earlier technique.

While the viewer may recognise abstract forms in Medek’s surfaces, Mráz describes the importance the artist ascribed to the structural surface of his paintings, which became both subject matter and expressive means, turning into an ‘organism created in space and time’ (Bohumír Mráz, Mikulas Medek, 1970, p. 45; see also fig. 1). Mráz regarded the artist’s work as inherently taking life as its inspiration: ‘Just at the beginning of the sixties when Medek’s paintings appeared to be purely abstract, the concrete reality of his studio plays the most evident part in them. The series of monumental red paintings which introduce the year 1962 are the product of the dominant colour of Medek’s indoor surroundings and express his emotional atmosphere so effectively that it surprises even the uninitiated onlooker’ (ibid., p. 41).

The present work is notable in its central vertical compositional device, irregular in its definition yet reminiscent of the vertebrae of a spine. This in conjunction with the combined Czech and French titles, which translate as Excision / Dissected picture, evoke the idea of Medek not only painting an abstract depiction of an emotional state, but taking the viewer onto a journey inside his body, deep down to his heart and soul. The intricate surface structure of the canvas can thus be seen to represent blood, flesh and bones, with organs and cells laid bare by the incision of the artist’s brush.

Mikuláš Medek was one of the most significant personalities of the Czech visual arts in the twentieth century. Undeterred by the strictures of the Communist government of the day, he was persistent in his quest for creative freedom. The grand-son of one of the country's greatest nineteenth-century painters, Antonin Slavicek, and son of a fallen general of the Czech army, Medek faced a difficult upbringing both during and after the Second World War. First persecuted by the Nazis, and then by the Communists, he was prevented from completing a formal artistic education, but inspired by the Surrealists, Medek set off to formulate his own very personal and idiosyncratic abstraction.