JAN MATULKA (1890-1972) Still Life with a Basket of Fruit.
Oil on canvas, circa 1920. 603x755 mm; 24x30 inches. Signed lower right.
Provenance ACA Galleries, New York (label). Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York (label). Owings-Dewey Fine Art, Santa Fe (label). Private collection, Washington, D.C.
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.
