Blecha 1916

Josef Capek made this painting called 'Blecha' with a limited palette, mostly pinks, reds, and whites, and just a touch of black for the hair. The woman is both there and not there – her body dematerializes into geometric forms. I’m thinking about how the painting might have come into being – maybe Capek started with a fully rendered figure, then scraped away paint to arrive at these simplified forms. The texture makes me think of early Picasso, maybe even Cezanne, with those deliberate planes. Look at how the planes of her arms intersect, creating a sense of depth and volume with very little information. I wonder, was Capek thinking about the female nude in art history? I imagine him, brush in hand, responding to a tradition while also breaking away from it, maybe simplifying down to basic shapes in order to express something essential about form and emotion. It’s like he’s saying, "Here’s a nude, but it's been reduced to its core elements," pushing painting to its bare minimum. And that's the ongoing conversation we painters are having, all the time.