Oil on canvas, 50x34 cm, framed size 38x54 cm
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About the artist:
The name of Josef Jíra, known as "the Malá Skála Chagall," is associated with the landscape of the Krkonoše foothills, and with extraordinary originality and individuality, both artistic and human.
The artist's life experiences always intertwined with his painting. As he himself stated: "I would probably never in my life be able to create a painting without tying myself to a specific place, a certain memory or experience."
Josef Jíra's paintings emerge from intensely experienced internal conflicts and personal clashes, which in his work transform into a powerfully emotional statement. His painting is charged with tension, emotional excitement, and dramatic pathos with a touch of romanticism. The expressive foundation of Jíra's work – energetic, rhythmic brushwork and colors that appear restless and subconscious – has its roots in the visionary currents of Expressionism.
Josef Jíra was born in 1929 in Turnov, but spent his childhood with his parents in Malá Skála. His sensitivity to imagery was shaped by both the rural environment and family background, as well as the landscape around Horky, where his paternal grandparents lived. It was there that he encountered archaic rituals of the Easter season and the traditional way of life in a Krkonoše foothill village, which left a deep and lasting impression on him.
As Hrabal remarked about the artist's work: "His graphic prints and canvases are always a place not only of victory and balanced fusion, but also a place of shipwreck. One could say of Josef Jíra's paintings that they are a series of one Stations of the Cross, that they are dramas that push banal reality beyond the frame. That's why Josef Jíra is always bristly and constantly on alert; 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
