Frantisek Foltyn

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 GBP

Sold

12,500 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

František Foltýn
IMPERIALISMUS (IMPERIALISM)
signed Frantisek Foltyn, dated 1926 Paris (lower left), dated 1925 twice (lower centre) and indistinctly inscribed (lower right)
pencil on paper
43.9 by 31.2cm., 17 3/8 by 12 3/8 in.

Provenance

Private Collection, Toulouse, France (acquired by 1985)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Catalogue Note

Foltyn, an important member of the Czech avant-garde, executed this drawing during his stay in Paris. It is a study for the major painting Imperialism (fig. 1), which depicts a tin man holding a red scythe in his hands. The numbers 14 and 18 echo the span of the First World War and the figure recalls a number of popular culture motifs at the time, such as the Tin Woodman in L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, a figure that has often been read to have political meaning and has its source deep in European folk art. The metallic, cylindric forms in the present work establish a stroing visual link with Fernand Léger, whose works in the late 1910s had been populated by such forms.