For 3.8 million euros including surcharge, which translates to 92.3 million crowns, the surrealist painting The Trauma of Birth by Jindřich Štyrský was auctioned in Paris.
The auction house Sotheby’s offered the painting, estimating the price between 3.5 and 5 million euros. According to experts, it is work exceptional dimensions and significance within the author’s work and world surrealism. Although the resulting sum remained at the lower limit of the estimate, the painting will be among the most expensive Czech works sold at auctions and marks a record for Štyrský’s work.
Oil painting from 1936 has a black background. He picks up white bags with blood prints, a glove, minerals, bones, and a human embryo. The canvas measures one meter in height and 2.5 meters in width. The painter had it hanging above his bed until his death. He bequeathed it to artist and close friend Toyen, from whose estate it was auctioned for the first time in 1982.
Styrian, who lived from 1899 to 1942, painted Trauma of Birth shortly after suffering a serious illness that nearly killed him, said Tessa Kostrzewa, Sotheby’s expert on modern European art. According to her, it is the author’s biggest and most ambitious work. It sums up his personality and artistic vision.
