Landscape

A prominent member of the second generation of Czech Cubists who matured around 1920, Josef Zamazal was active mainly in the city of Brno, located in Czechoslovakia’s wealthy industrial heartland of Moravia. In this early work he borrows from the French Cubist stylistic idiom of simplified geometric motifs and a restricted palette of earth-toned colors in depicting a building and bridge set among foliage. Zamazal and other Czech Cubists, however, adapted their foreign models to local sensibilities and ultimately created a regional style of great originality and historic importance. In this landscape, for instance, the deep tonal ranges of terracotta reds, apple greens, and lemon yellows derive from the Expressionistic tendencies of Czech Cubism in Prague rather than the cool, analytical compositions of Paris.