The painting called The Game of Sunspots by Karel Vítězslav Mašek, who lived from 1865 to 1927, was auctioned at Thursday’s auction in Prague for 7.5 million crowns, including mark-up. The reserve price of the 1910 canvas was 3.5 million. The amount reached is the painter’s author’s record, said Jana Bryndová from the organizing auction house Arthouse Hejtmánek.
Mašek is one of the representatives of Czech symbolism and art nouveau. According to the organizers, he used to be similarly valued as his generational companion Alfons Mucha.
“The Musée d’Orsay in Paris is also proud of Mašek’s work. He and Mucha were friends, classmates and had a similar painting style. However, after studying in Paris, Mašek returned to Prague, while Mucha, who was five years older, stayed in France, where he later became famous ,” says the owner of the auction house Tomáš Hejtmánek.
Maška’s large-format painting The Game of Sunspots depicts five women dancing in the sunlight. The work comes from the private collection of a close relative of the artist. “The more than a hundred-year-old painting, which I only knew from the picture in Mašek’s book monograph, was waiting to be rediscovered in an uninhabited villa in Prague. It was dirty over the years of storage and the top layer of varnish had turned gray, so the painting was almost invisible,” describes Hejtmánek .
A significant part of Mašek’s work ended up in the rubble of the house, which was destroyed during the air raid on Prague in February 1945. The resulting gap was later filled by the Dancing House. The fact that Mašek, after being appointed a professor at the School of Applied Arts in Prague in 1898, decided not to exhibit anymore is behind the oblivion of the talented painter. He also devoted himself to students at a private school, which he later founded in his studio.
Mašk’s painting Libuše from 1893 is in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the apartment buildings in Prague designed by him or the lunettes in the Museum of Applied Arts are well known. He decorated the hall of the headquarters of the Czech Post in Jindřišská Street, in Bubenč, people still come to see the art nouveau villa he had built there for his family. He was a painter and illustrator, an architect and a teacher. Josef Čapek, for example, belonged to his pupils whom he influenced.
Thursday’s auction also offered works by Antonín Slavíček, Jiří John, Běla Kolářová, Zbyňek Sekal or Ondřej Sekora. Some of the works come from the collection of art historian Jiří Šetlík.
