Sediaci model I. 

Jozef Hanula made this pencil sketch titled ‘Sediaci model I.’ Sometime between the late 19th and early 20th century, when academic art was increasingly scrutinized for its idealized, often exclusionary representations. Hanula, who lived through significant social and political upheaval in Austro-Hungarian Empire and later Czechoslovakia, seems to engage with the traditional genre of the nude in a more human, less glorified manner. The sitter is an older, working-class man. Stripped bare, his body tells a story of labor, age, and perhaps, hardship, far from the smooth, youthful bodies often celebrated in classical art. Notice the averted gaze, which lends the figure a sense of introspection and vulnerability. Hanula captures a sense of weary resignation, subtly questioning whose bodies get represented and celebrated in art. He presents us not with an idealized form, but with the quiet dignity of a working man's body.