Emil Filla

Executed in 1921, the present work displays Emil Filla’s approach to Picasso’s and Braque’s synthetic cubism to which the artist had been exposed during his extensive travels to Paris between 1911 and 1914. Characterised by the use of flat surfaces, sharp edges, and oblique lines, Buste d'homme showcases Filla’s talent as a draughtsman.

Filla pioneered an idiosyncratic Czech national style at the confluence of European modern art movements. This so-called ‘Cubo-Expressionism’ synthesised the troubled spiritual atmosphere of central Europe, as exemplified by Edvard Munch and the Die Brücke artists, with the pictorial structure of the Paris Cubists. It soon became the hallmark of the group Osma (The Eight) and the Group of Fine Artists, co-founded by Filla in 1911. Filla was at the epicentre of the avant-garde in Bohemia, and it is predominantly as a result of his impact that Prague has come to be recognised as the second most important centre for Cubism after Paris.

Describing Filla's engagement with Cubism, Douglas Cooper wrote: 'Filla was the most constructive of the Czech Cubist painters ... he studied paintings by Braque and Picasso of 1909 intelligently ... The avant-garde Czech artists were not inclined to imitate true Cubism; they were not inclined with recreating in all its fullness that solid tangible reality of a still-life or a mere seated figure. They wanted their subjects to have a higher symbolic significance, to represent moments of spiritual intensity in the life of man, to express deep inner feelings and a sense of national awareness.' (Douglas Cooper, The Cubist Epoch, London, 1971, p. 153).