Jan Zrzavý God’s Play

Jan Zrzavý (1890–1977) was one of the most important figures in 20th-century Czech art. The enormous artistic legacy Zrzavý left can be approached in various ways. He was a member of important art groups and associations, but the private destinies of his works played out elsewhere. Nor can his work be divided up around life events or places that influenced him and essentially gave his style its direction. A far more reasonable approach is to concentrate on tracing the interlacing themes he focused on for many years or returned to later once he believed he had found the best method with which to express them. The monograph’s structure is thus dictated by the character of the artist’s work and traces his sustaining areas of interest: The theme of the face, which he dealt with in his early and in his late Vlastní podobizny [Self-Portraits]. For Zrzavý the face signified an encounter with the self, with someone close, or with someone with whom we would like to be close, be that Christ or Julius Zeyer. The theme of melancholy, which Zrzavý soon recognised as a central emotion in life; all of Zrzavý’s work is sometimes summed up as melancholic. The theme of parable is generalised onto familiar subjects relating to humility, the helping of others around one, and mercy. However, from the very outset Zrzavý moved between extremes. Alongside tranquillity and meditation his work contained the opposite aspect, manifested as loose sexuality, the death drive, and unbridled pleasure. Among his artistic models, mention must be made of the artist’s personal Leonardo cult. Zrzavý had a strong relationship to literature. He had a sharp sense of how to capture stories and was able to transport their internal dimensions to his drawings. Zrzavý’s work from the very beginning evolved in two directions – figural and landscape art – which intertwine little. He only rarely inserted a figure in his landscape. He was chiefly interested in places, the diverseness of places appealed to him. At the end of his long, artistically exceptionally productive life, Zrzavý returned to the very roots of European art (Greece), to which all his favourite artists made reference. This study, divided into short texts, presents a three-dimensional portrait of Jan Zrzavý. In short, this book is the key to understanding his work and his soul.