Oil on canvas, 60x70 cm, framed 73x63 cm
Download catalogue of Josef Jíra's works
About the author:
The name of Josef Jíra, also known as the "Chagall of Malá Skála," is associated with the Podkrkonoší landscape, as well as with extraordinary originality and distinctiveness, both artistic and human.
The artist's life experiences always intertwined with his painting. As he himself declared: "I would probably never in my life be able to create a painting without tying it to a place, a specific memory, or an experience."
Josef Jíra's paintings grow from intensely experienced internal conflicts and personal struggles, which transform into a strongly emotional statement in his work. His painting is charged with tension, emotional excitement, and dramatic pathos with a touch of romantic sentiment. The expressive foundation of Jíra's work – an energetic, rhythmic style and a color palette that appears restless and subliminal – has its roots in the visionary currents of Expressionism.
Josef Jíra was born in Turnov in 1929, but spent his childhood with his parents in Malá Skála. His sensitivity to imagery was shaped not only by the rural environment and family background but also by the landscape around Horky, where his paternal grandparents lived. It was there that he encountered the archaic rituals of the Easter period and the traditional way of life in the Podkrkonoší village, which left a deep and lasting impression on him.
As Hrabal noted about the artist's work: "His graphic prints and canvases are always a place not only of victory and equilibrium of fusion but also a place of shipwreck. It could be said of Josef Jíra's paintings that they are series of one Stations of the Cross, that they are dramas that push banal reality beyond the frame. That is why Josef Jíra is always bristling and constantly on guard; he can only create when his human problems have matured, when conflicting situations have sharpened enough to burst into colorful and graphic flaps."
B.H., Prague 1978
