Acacia 1931

Jindrich Styrsky made this painting with oil, and maybe some thinner to get those washes in the sky, or whatever that is! Looking at the blocky forms, I imagine Styrsky thinking about Cubism. He’s pushing and pulling shapes, flattening them into almost architectural stacks of color. There's a biomorphic blob down there, all soft and pillowy, which feels really different from the rest. It makes me wonder if he was thinking about the Surrealists, too. The colors are doing a lot of work here, balancing warm and cool tones. The red, yellow, and blue in the blocky shapes create a kind of visual vibration against the pale background. It’s a quirky combo that feels both calculated and intuitive. You can imagine him, brush in hand, building up these forms one stroke at a time, responding to the emerging composition. Painters are always talking to each other across time. Each artwork is just one sentence in a long and ongoing conversation. We look, we respond, and we keep the dialogue going.