The
Czech painter and graphic artist František Matoušek (1901 Vysoké Mýto – 1961
Prague) was born 120 years ago. In Matoušek’s paintings, the elementary
geometric forms and colour planes create harmonious as well as dissonant
compositions, imbued with an intense poetic charge inspired by the modern urban
environment and his activity in the Devětsil Modern Culture Association. In the
1920s and ‘30s, Matoušek rendered the ideas of Constructivism in a distinct
creative style of his own. In his work, he gradually absorbed the influences of
Cubism, Purism, Poetism and Surrealism, and of artists such as László
Moholy-Nagy, El Lisickij and Josef Šíma. František Matoušek pursued his
artistic career not only in Prague, but also Paris. In London, he co-founded
and headed the Czechoslovak School of Applied Art, and painted and exhibited in
New York. In 1945, an article was published in the Czech-language Newyorské listy (New York Paper) that
summarized Matoušek’s oeuvre to date as follows: “His images poetically transform reality into paintings, in a condensed,
almost fairy-tale-like way, in symbolic projection, capturing all the beauties
of the world, from all places around Europe that he so restlessly travelled.”
