Head in a napoleonic hat 1915

Josef Capek made this painting, Head in a Napoleonic Hat, sometime around 1915 with oil on canvas. It's got this great ochre and yellow palette contrasted against reds and these cool greyish-blues... I can imagine Capek, brush in hand, pivoting between intention and accident. Starting with that central oval of the face then surrounding it with stripes and angles. The Napoleonic hat is such a great touch, like he’s mocking some sort of authority. The colors are really singing, and the paint application is matte, which makes me think the artist thinned it to a wash, rubbing it into the weave. Capek was part of the Czech avant-garde, so he's responding to Cubism, and Fauvism, but he’s also totally doing his own thing. In a way, all artists build upon each other’s experiments. Each artwork is a kind of inquiry—a visual thought experiment using colors, shapes, and forms to explore something new, but also ask age old questions.