Jindřich Štyrský

Emil František Burian (a gift from the artist. Burian, 1904-1959, was a Czech poet, journalist, musician and playwright, a member of Devětsil and founder of the D46 and D47 after the Second World War)
Régis Cosatte, Paris
Galerie 1900-2000 (Marcel Fleiss), Paris
Purchased from the above in Miami in December 2003

Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Andre Breton y el Surrealismo, 1991
Montauban, Musée Ingres, Collage - Decollage: Rencontres d’art, 1992, no. 111
Valencia, Ivam, Centre Julio Gonzales, The Art of the Avant-Garde in Czechoslovakia 1918-1938, 1993, illustrated in the catalogue
Lisbon, Museu National de Arte Antigua, Les tentations de Bosch et l’éternel retour, 1994
Paris, Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Féminin-Masculin: Le sexe de l’art, 1995-96
Prague, City Gallery, Český Surrealismus 1929-1953, 1996, no. 351, illustrated in the catalogue
Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Prague, Capitale secrète des avant-gardes, 1900-1938, 1997, no. 285, illustrated in the catalogue
Prague, Dům U Kamenného zvonu (Stone Bell House), Jindřich Štyrský (1899-1942), 2007
Washington, National Gallery of Art; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Milwaukee, Art Museum; Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art: Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-45, 2007-08, no. 102, illustrated in the catalogue
Houston, Cullen Collection, 2011, no. 73, illustrated in the catalogue

Vítězslav Nezval (ed.), Surrealismus, Prague, 1936, illustrated on the cover
L'Echange surréaliste, Tokyo, 1936, p. 81, illustrated
Philippe Soupault, Ecrits sur l'Art du XXe siècle, Paris, 1994, p. 5, catalogued; p. 95, illustrated
'Numéro spécial Prague', in Dossier de l'art, June 1997, p. 62, illustrated
Lenka Bydžovská & Karel Srp, Jindřich Štyrský, Prague, 2007, p. 312, no. 408, illustrated; pp. 300, 311 & 328, discussed; p. 528, illustrated on the cover of Surrealismus magazine; p. 529, cited

Unexamined out of the frame and under glass, this work is overall in good condition as per the catalogue illustration, with some scattered minor creases in the collage elements which may well be original to the work, notably in the trousers of the central figure, horizontally in its 'head', a vertical crease possibly with some associated with a faint minor tear in the baby's head and background below. There are two very small spots of surface abrasion in the floor between the baby's body and the woman's leg. The colours in reality overall are less red than those in the catalogue illustration.
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Executed in 1934 the present work is a collage from The Portable Cabinet, one of 66 photomontages Štyrský created between 1934-35. Neither part of a narrative, nor intended to be seen in sequence, each collage was conceived as a work of art in its own right. The collages were first exhibited at The First Czech Surrealist Exhibition in Prague in 1935.

Using a print titled One’s Good Fortune, the Other’s Misfortune as inspiration, the work caricatures the awkward embrace of a couple surprised by a man in a dinner jacket. It is one of the most iconic images from the series. Like other collages from the Portable Cabinet, the work is a variation on the theme of sentimentality and cruelty and the hypocrisy of bourgeois values.

Superimposed on a bourgeois interior, complete with Louis XVI style chair and sideboard, a fern in a Chinese vase, an exotic pot and a candelabra, the two main protagonists are primarily comprised of anatomic parts culled from a medical text book. To the lady's left a putto with a skin disease assists. The incorporation of cut out body parts to express a subverted message is an early modernist example of a genre that would subsequently become more widespread (fig. 1). For Štyrský both the visual impression and message are ruthless. Regardless of whether he is considering infidelity, as in the present lot, or marriage (fig. 2), Štyrský's imagery and underlying comment is equally anti-middleclass, and characteristically unforgiving.  

As Lenka Bydžovská and Karel Srp comment: 'In Portable Cabinet Štyrský attempted to create a body that differed from reality but was at the same time far removed from the widespread grotesque form used by Arcimboldo. In assembling it he combined the use of various different source materials. In adition to the xylographs popularised by Max Ernst, he soon added other materials, in particular various kinds of contemporary colour prints and holy pictures, thus expressing his critical stance towards the Catholic religion and bourgeois society. In doing so he clearly opened up new areas of sensibility, for which there was no model in older forms of art. In contrast to Ernst, who around 1930 had worked on novels in collage form, Štyrský's interest centred primarily on female and male figures, and also many symbols linked with sexuality and death. Unlike Ernst, Štyrský did not arrange the collages in Portable Cabinet in a narrative sequence. Each one remained an autonomous picture. More than Ernst, he aimed at creating "new beings" to which he often referred to in his texts in the 1930s. He gave life to beings that had previously not existed.' (Bydžovská & Srp, p. 300).  

For another collage by Štyrský from The Portable Cabinet see lot 8.