

Josef Sima is one of the rare artists of his generation, if not the only artist as maintained by the great 20th century art historian Meyer Schapiro, to have been able to perceive and transpose something cosmic in his painted works, whilst relying upon a particularly limited number of graphic elements. In Double Paysage, painted in 1954, the objects are fixed in a calm, dreamlike and serene atmosphere. As a true invitation to meditation, the canvas depicts a purified, dematerialized reality of moving simplicity and delicacy. The split objects break with traditional perspective and disturb spatial-temporal references. Sima here constructs a fantasmatic landscape of unprecedented scope within which any sense of scale and distance no longer exists. Brilliant.