Gray-Blue Landscape

Karel Malich’s early work consisted primarily of naturalistic landscape paintings. After moving to Prague in the 1950s, Malich became interested in abstraction, light, and geometry. While the painting is designated a "landscape" in its title, the floating blocks of luminous color against a wash of grey emphasize geometry and linear planes over any recognizable landscape.

Despite Socialist Realism—art promoting an academic, naturalistic style idealizing everyday life under Communism—being the prescribed method for the official art of Czechoslovakia under Communism, various modes of modern art styles continued to flourish after the war, especially in the 1960s. Two major stylistic influences are at play in Grey-Blue Landscape. In 1960 Malich visited Moscow and was deeply influenced by the early 1920s work of the Russian Suprematist Kazimir Malevich who utilized abstract geometries to represent absolute and universal ideas. The gestural marks and painterly surface present in Grey-Blue Landscape, on the other hand, are techniques prevalent in contemporary French Art Informel.