Mirvald Vladislav 1921–2003

Still life with a rowan branch

oil, canvas, cardboard, frame, 25,9 × 33,7 cm
During the Second World War and for several years afterwards, some artists returned to Cubist morphology and further developed the legacy of this breakthrough artistic movement, which had made such a significant impact in various fields, from painting and sculpture to architecture and scenic design. Artists of the emerging post-war generation built on it in a new way, taking into account their own experience. Among them were Zdeněk Sýkora and Vladislav Mirvald, two now famous painters from Louny. Their beginnings were similar, although they both took different yet original paths. Both were united by a sense of rational order, which, however, did not exclude the possibility of chance. Zdeněk Sýkora's still life from 1948 is almost identical to a cubist still life with a high probability attributed to Vladislav Mirvald (an expert on the work of Zdeněk Sýkora, his wife Lenka Sýkorová, has also expressed her opinion in this sense). Both future artists painted their paintings during their studies at the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague, apparently based on the same model. The still-lifes reflected the expressive manner of expression, in addition to the emerging precisely thought-out composition that was later characteristic of both artists. Zdeněk Sýkora's painting Still life with a rowan branch, 1948, oil on canvas, 33 x 40 cm, is reproduced on page 49 in the book Zdeněk Sýkora - My Nature (texts Lenka Sýkorová), which was published in 2020 by Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář in Prague to accompany the exhibition of the same name.