On the Pasture 1944

Cyprián Majerník's ‘On the Pasture’ is a dreamscape rendered in oil, a place where memory and feeling seem to converge. The artist’s brushstrokes are like whispers, laying down tones of brown and ochre that bleed into each other, creating forms that emerge and recede, as if the scene is still forming in the artist's mind. Look closely and you'll notice how Majerník uses texture to build his world. The houses have a kind of lumpy tactility, as though they've grown organically from the land. The brushwork is direct and unblended, imbuing the scene with immediacy and vulnerability. Then there are the horses in the foreground, almost dissolving into the fence with which they share the picture plane. They seem to flicker between existence and non-existence, like ghosts in the landscape. Majerník's use of broken colour and fragmented form reminds me of Cezanne, but with a deeper sense of melancholy. Both artists are interested in using paint to capture the elusive nature of perception and experience, but Majerník's work feels particularly personal and intimate.