Diviš Alén - Width - 31 cm

Alén Diviš was important Czech illustrator, illustrator and painter (1900-1956)

Representation in collections: His work is represented in almost two dozens galleries throughout the Czech Republic, including the National Gallery in Prague, the Gallery of the Capital City of Prague, the Gallery of Modern Art in Roudnice nad Labem and the West Bohemian Gallery in Pilsen. His work is quite often exhibited, as evidenced by thirty individual and eighty joint exhibitions.

In the last thirty years, Alén Diviš has become synonymous with artistic outsidership for Czech art. A solitary and unclassifiable creator of hallucinatory visions, horror scenes and felt religious scenes, he has so far been one of the least studied personalities of Czech fine art, entwined with many legends and myths.

He spent most of his life abroad. At the end of the 1920s, he left for the then Center for Modern Art in Paris. Here, at the beginning of World War II, he was accused of espionage and spent several months in solitary confinement in Santé prison. After a novel journey through concentration camps in France, Morocco and Martinique, he found refuge in New York. He returned to Czechoslovakia in 1947 and had a short period of interest in his work. However, in the new conditions after 1948, marginalization, poverty and oblivion soon awaited him. Diviš was influenced by cubism and expressionism at various times, and in a special way foreshadowed art brut or informal. His work, however, was mainly based on a strong interest in existential themes, whether inspired by his own tragic destinies or literature.

source: http://www.galerierudolfinum.cz/cs/vystavy/archiv-vystav/alen-divis/; http://abart-full.artarchiv.cz