Gross František 1909–1985

City, 1942

signed in pencil bottom right F. Gross 42, drawing, pencil, paper, 11 × 17,5 cm, mount, frame, glass
František Gross, a founding member of the famous Group 42, is one of the leading personalities of Czech painting of the last century. He was based on the cubist morphology and surrealist poetics. He identified with the group's focus on on the representation of big city life, inspired by the turbulent technical and scientific progress. He was always interested in the evolution of the world around him, whose the positive and negative aspects of which he could accurately depict. The most important period of his work is considered by experts and collectors to be the most important period of his career. After the 1950s, when he succumbed to a certain extent to the so-called socialist realism, in the 1960s to 1980s he achieved new creative heights. Then he inventively continued his beginnings, He was once again able to react sensitively to urban changes and technical breakthroughs.