Zdeněk Sýkora – Colour Gardens
Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář, Prague
Through 12 April 2025
The exhibition Colour Gardens recalls one of the significant stages of the artistic development of the painter ZDENEK SYKORA (1920–2011) who is primarily know as the author of structures and lines. Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář is exhibiting the painter‘ cycle Gardens which includes the collection of artworks from 1959–1961. The paintings illustrate the artist’s transition from a realistic depiction of nature towards abstract compositions which later evolved into structures. According to Pavel Kappel, an art historian, this rather short period of three years forms “a fundamental turning point in Sýkora’s artwork”. Henri Matisse whom he got to know when visiting the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg in 1959 affected the artist’s shift towards Fauvist painting. In the catalogue, which was published on the occasion of Zdeněk Sýkora’s 90th anniversary, Pavel Kappel observes: “We call the direct outcome of the Matisse’s lesson, the series of coloured paintings, the Gardens on the basis of the prevailing motif, even if we can include some paintings which he had begun before the crucial trip... or even paintings with a different motif altogether – Tree, Autumn Forest...”
The author of the exhibition, Lenka Sýkorová, the wife and collaborator of the artist, who is the closest to Zdeněk Sýkora’s artwork, selected more than thirty artworks for the exhibition in Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář. Besides paintings from private collections, there are some on loan from Galerie Benedikta Rejta in Louny, National Gallery in Prague and two of them were loaned by a private collector in Munich. At the exhibition, of which architect is Josef Pleskot, there are artworks the artist considered crucial such as Black Garden (1958), Garden (1959), Autumn Forest (1960), two paintings called Blue Garden (1959 and 1960), Garden (with a Square) (1960), Garden/Composition (1961).
Lenka Sýkorová emphasises that the paintings from the Gardens cycle represent the culmination of Sýkora’s landscape work from the 1950s and that they are the proof of his colourist talent and at the same time, they form the confirmation of his further heading towards abstraction and the condition for finding his own way.
GALERIE ZDENEK SKLENAR - PRAGUE
Schönkirch Palace - Mikulandská 7, Prague 1 – New Town
Zdeněk Sýkora – Colour Gardens
Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář, Prague
4 February - 12 April 2025
