Bílek Alois 1887–1961

Rest by the brook

oil on canvas, 46 × 55 cm, frame, signed. bottom left Abílek Provenance: private collection, Paris. Expertise PhDr. Rea Michalová, Ph.D.
The painting "Rest by the brook" is an unquestionable collector's item, the spirit of French Symbolism, extremely impressive work of Alois Bílek, an artist whose remarkable creative journey, which can be into abstract, symbolist and neoclassical phases, will be fully appreciated only with a comprehensive art historical treatment. Especially thanks to the exhibition at the National Gallery in Prague in 1998 and a decade earlier the "Line, Color, Shape" at the Prague City Gallery, it received the well-deserved attention to Bílek's unsubjective intermezzo, bounded by the first two years (1913-1914) of his French sojourn (lasting until 1928). For a modern monograph that would thoroughly examine his contacts with the French Unanimists, as well as a detailed map his exhibition activity in the Mecca of modern art, as well as his subsequent evolution to monumentalizing neoclassicism and social Alois Bílek is still waiting. Born in the small village of Skoupý in the Příbram region, Bílek moved there after his gymnasium studies in Příbram and Písek to Prague, where he graduated first from two semesters of architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague. He wanted to fulfill his parents' wishes, but since he did not find this field fulfilling, he decided to transfer to the Academy of Fine Arts to Professor Max Pirner in Prague, which he completed in 1912. A year later he won a Hlávek scholarship and went to Paris via Holland and Belgium. The fact that almost as soon as he arrived in the metropolis on the Seine, he began to work in abstract morphology in his work shows that innovative artistic tendencies he encountered there had a very strong influence on his perception. Can It can be assumed that at the beginning of his stay in Paris, Bílek became acquainted with František Kupka. It was common practice for Czech scholarship holders to until the Second World War, to approach their own, established on the local scene. ...and he was happy to receive them. Probably also under under his influence, Bílek experimented in 1913-1914 in his works with the visualisation of music and explored the psychological effect of colours. At contrast to Kupka's almost empirical conception, Bílek's work is more emotive and reflects the intensity of his experience of listening to music. After returning to home, he settled in Prague with his family. In addition to his free works, he he also worked for architecture (e.g. figural window designs in the building of the savings bank in Louny, the Regional Office of the Central Bohemia Region in Zborovská Street in Prague, etc.). In order to explain the remarkable meditative symbolism and neoptic colorism of the present work, it is necessary to add the French context to the by another defining environment in which Alois Bílek, after arriving in Paris was the circle of writers of René Arcos, the unanimist and founder of the "Abbay" artistic community, and Émile Verhaeren, whose friendship was of great importance to the painter and his relationship to art. and the world, was of fundamental importance to the painter. Bílek's relationship with Verhaeren, who was oriented towards humanist symbolism, visited Verhaeren twice a week and participated in discussions about art with his circle of friends. Another circle was the Nabis movement of Maurice Denis, a painter-philosopher whose theoretical writings were published in at the time of Bílka's arrival in Paris (M. Denis, Théories, 1890-1910. symbolisme et de Gauguin, 1913). his penchant for symbolism, both in theme and colour. All these influences then intersected in Bilek's realisations, such as the painting "Resting by a stream". Here, it is not the later abundant neoclassical representation of the bathing motif, but a purely symbolist depiction of rest as a moment of meditation, a turning inward, a sacred moment of mental cleansing, accentuated by the impressive, colorful palettes and harmonies of the (E. Verhaeren), which in themselves have an undeniable psychologizing and meditative-poetic aspirations. PhDr. Rea Michalová. Ph. D.