Sutnar Ladislav 1897–1976

Venus

Acrylic, masonite, frame, restored, 109,5 × 180 cm, signed bottom right Ladislav Sutnar 64
Ladislav Sutnar begins to create from coloured papers around 1960 collages of female nudes, which then become the source material for for the serigraphs of The Strip Street series and later for the acrylic painted large-scale paintings of Venus. Sutnar himself in the foreword to the album, which he self-published in January 1963, explains that he was inspired by his first New York apartment on 52nd Street on the block between Madison Avenue and Broadway in the early 1940s: What generally speaking would have been a quiet everyday street, every night after 11 became the fabled strip street known far and wide as the city's center of sex. ... And now that brutal street has fallen victim to sprawling development. of the sixties and disappeared forever, I'd like to show my my personal view of those old days and of the stripped-down gorgeous women who were an essential part of the strip street scene." On the style of his paintings, he adds: "Each drawing is a wave of interpretation of the impact of a quick, fleeting glimpse into the darkened aphrodisiacal atmosphere of moving women's bodies that shiver, shake, and undulate,twisting and writhing. ... To dramatically translate these impressions, I I have chosen as a visual device an accentuated and shapeless silhouette of the moving figure, which contrasts with the surfaces of the juxtaposed of unbroken colours. The visual shortcut resulted in a visually striking, simple pattern. The title of the wordless poster, given in the subtitle of this file, refers to the typical poster design that is typical of the graphic sheets of this series.