Still Life with Owl, Violin, and Shell
1925
18.625" x 11.5" Framed: 25.5" x 18.375"
Works on Paper, conte crayon on paper
Region: North America
18.625" x 11.5" Framed: 25.5" x 18.375"
Works on Paper, conte crayon on paper
Region: North America
Sign Lower Right
In the late 1920s, Matulka began working on a series of still lifes that demonstrate a clear awareness of Picasso's work of the same period. The tipped, angular, table-top compositions incorporate geometric marking patterns that organize the space in a clean, graphic manner. Matulka depicted his trademark objects, instruments, phonographs, shells, and exotic masks.
About the Artist
(1890 - 1972)
Jan Matulka was born in 1890 in a small town southwest of Prague, in what later became Czechoslovakia. In 1905 he took his first art classes in Prague, and two years later his family emigrated to the United States, settling in the Bronx, New York. He then began taking classes at the National Academy of Design, continuing there through 1917. After he finished his training, he moved into a studio apartment in Manhattan and met Lida Jirouskova, whom he married in 1918. Throughout this time he traveled quite extensively, visiting the southwest United States, Czechoslovakia, Paris, and Prague. In 1917 he lived in New Mexico, where he adopted a cubist style and painted some the earliest modernist works in the Southwest. In addition, he also painted directly from life, recording ceremonial scenes and daily life in the Pueblos.
In 1926 Katherine Dreier arranged his first important one-man exhibition at The Art Center, 65 East 56th Street in New York. However their relationship soon began to sour due to disagreements between the two.
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