Karel Teige

Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco
Purchased from the above

Florida, The Wolfsonian; Chicago, Smart Gallery; New York, Grey Art Gallery: Dreams and Disillusion: Karel Teige and the Czech Avant-Garde, 2000-01
Houston, Cullen Collection, 2011, no. 92, illustrated in the catalogue

Unexamined out of the frame and under glass. Apart from a handful of very faint creases at the edges of the sheet, notably in the lower right below the right leg (possibly associated with a faint tear and original to the work), this work is in very good original condition. Presented framed and glazed. The colours are somewhat deeper overall than in the catalogue illustration.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Executed in 1947, the present work is a particularly striking example of the collages that Teige produced between the mid-1930s until his death in 1951. The juxtaposion of a pair of lady's stockinged legs with four Spitfire aeroplanes flying in formation in part reflected the vogue for post-war pin-ups and the popularity of their display as a mascot on the sides of fighter planes. But it also expressed Teige's subversive political views, while also conforming to the Surrealist aesthetic of placing contrasting items adjacent to one another in order to make innovative and compelling new visual and intellectual associations.     

Collage was a natural extension of Teige's interest in typography and book design that he had pioneered in the 1920s and early 1930s both as leader of Devětsil and editor of its magazine ReD, and through his collaboration on book covers and page layouts with poets and writers like Nezval and Constantin Biebl. But because he did not intend his collages to be for publication, he found that through them he could express his personal and political views more freely. His transition to collage also underscored his views on the death of easel painting, and that painting would be replaced by the photograph and by film. 

With reference to the present lot, Karel Srp and Lenka Bydžovská discuss Teige's collages from this period in the following terms: 'Today no exhibition or publication on Surrealism in Czechoslovakia would be complete without them [the collages], yet Teige himself regarded them as a primarily personal matter intended for his circle of friends. In them, he gave freer rein to his imagination than in his theoretical texts. His collages combined reproductions of old and modern art, architectural images, famous works by modern photographers, and banal snapshots. Teige used some of these images merely as building material, without regard for their primary context and role. Other pieces inspired him to enter into dialogue with the original artists and offer fresh interpretations of their work. Above all, Teige was fascinated by the nude female body and its component parts. His collages often included a headless torso, sometimes with breasts, eyes, lips, or other objects in the place of a head. He assembled mutants from fragments of bodies. Teige saw a similarity between his own work, with its violent deformations of the erotic female body, and that of Hans Bellmer. Teige's belief that art was eroticism transposed informed his collages, as one can see in his piece in the Cullen collection. Here, Teige transformed a woman's stockinged legs, raised at the sky among fighter planes, into a phallic symbol.' (Houston, Cullen Collection. exh. cat., p. 191).