Self Directed - Prague Gallery Sketches

Sketches from Gallery in Prague on the Illustration Trip

The Central Art Gallery is situated in the Old Town Square and it displays the works of the artists: 1. Salvador Dali 2. Alfons Mucha 3. Andy Warhol on individual floors. We chose to visit both floors 1 and 2. We spent about 1 to 2 hours pouring over this art and was thoroughly worth the entrance price and iterated the Bohemian cultural heritage of Prague.

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquess of Dalí de Púbol (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship and the striking and bizarre images in his work.

Born in Figueres, Catalonia, Dalí received his formal education in fine arts at Madrid. Influenced by Impressionism and the Renaissance masters from a young age, he became increasingly attracted to Cubism and avant-garde movements. He moved closer to Surrealism in the late 1920s and joined the Surrealist group in 1929, soon becoming one of its leading exponents. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931, and is one of the most famous Surrealist paintings. Dalí lived in France throughout the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) before leaving for the United States in 1940 where he achieved commercial success. He returned to Catalonia in 1948 where he announced his return to the Catholic faith and developed his "nuclear mysticism" style, based on his interest in classicism, mysticism and recent scientific developments.

Dalí's artistic repertoire included painting, graphic arts, film, sculpture, design and photography, at times in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays and criticism. Major themes in his work include dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science and his closest personal relationships. To the dismay of those who held his work in high regard, and to the irritation of his critics, his eccentric and ostentatious public behaviour sometimes drew more attention than his artwork. His public support for the Francoist regime, his commercial activities and the quality and authenticity of some of his late works have also been controversial. His life and work were an important influence on other Surrealists, pop art and contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. There are two major museums devoted to his work: The Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain and the Salvador Dalí Museum in Florida.

While largely celebrated for his surreal artwork, when Salvador Dali studied art in Barcelona and Madrid he dabbled in a number of artistic styles.

Interestingly enough, his surreal work was partly inspired by the writings of Sigmund Freud about the significance of subconscious imagery.

Being Spanish, his obvious love of horses makes perfect sense. Horses often make an appearance in his art.

http://www.theequinest.com/horses-of-salvador-dali/

The Gálvez museum in Macharaviaya will be hosted a collection of Salvador Dalí’s paintings of horses. The exhibition ran from 15 September until 11 December, comprised of 24 of the artist’s works.

http://www.surinenglish.com/what-to-do/201709/12/salvador-dali-horses-20170912112213.html

Animals featured heavily in the surrealist’s masterpieces and horses were no exception. He is said to have been fascinated by their "childlike vitality" and "life" and studied them through legends, mythology and history. This exhibition showed works by Dalí that represent famous horses such as Clavileño, the fictional wooden horse that appears in Don Quixote, or Alexander the Great’s horse, Bucephalus, and his portrait of Lady Godiva, who according to legend rode her horse naked through the streets of Coventry in England, covered only by her long hair. The collection also includes works which depict how horses have been used in agriculture and by soldiers during the Crusades.

Alfons Maria Mucha (24 July 1860 – 14 July 1939), known internationally as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech painter, illustrator and graphic artist, living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, best known for his distinctly stylized and decorative theatrical posters, particularly those of Sarah Bernhardt. He produced illustrations, advertisements, decorative panels, and designs, which became among the best-known images of the period.

In the second part of his career, at the age of 43, he returned to his homeland of Bohemia-Moravia region in Austria and devoted himself to painting a series of twenty monumental canvases known as The Slav Epic, depicting the history of all the Slavic peoples of the world, which he painted between 1912 and 1926. In 1928, on the 10th anniversary of the independence of Czechoslovakia, he presented the series to the Czech nation. He considered it his most important work. It is now on display in Prague.

I spent the time sketching horses in all the lithographs, paintings and drawings etc that I could find.