JAN MATULKA (1890 1972) Landscape with Winding Path

Sale 2678 - Lot 62

Price Realized: $ 3,250

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500

JAN MATULKA (1890-1972)
Landscape with Winding Path.

Watercolor and gouache over pencil on paper, circa 1930. 382x506 mm; 15x19⅞ inches. Signed in watercolor lower left, and with a charcoal sketch of tree verso.

Provenance
Estate of the artist, with the stamp verso.
Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago.
Private collection, Florida.
Private collection, Connecticut.

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Additional Details

Jan Matulka, alongside Stuart Davis and Max Weber, was one of the proponents of the nascent American Cubism style. He was born in Czechoslovakia and studied fine art in Prague before immigrating to the United States in 1907. He enrolled at the National Academy of Design and in 1917 won the Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship, which he used to fund trips to the American southwest and Europe. Works from his time in Europe reflect influences by Paul Cézanne and early Cubism, striking a balance between realism and geometric abstraction. Later in his career, Matulka would explore Surrealism and Expressionism. Matulka exhibited with the Whitney Studio Club in New York during the 1920's. During the Great Depression, Matulka worked for the WPA's Federal Art Project and supported himself by teaching at the Art Students League (instructing students such as Burgoyne Diller, Dorothy Dehner and David Smith). Matulka brought different elements of European Modernism to the United States and to his students, though this style fell out of favor, in light of the new American Scene style and socially inspired themes.