Lot 139: FRANTISEK FOLTYN

1891 - 1976 IMPERIALISMUS (IMPERIALISM) signed Frantisek Foltyn, dated 1926 Paris (lower left), dated 1925 twice (lower centre) and indistinctly inscribed (lower right) pencil on paper 43.9 by 31.2cm., 17 3/8 by 12 3/8 in. Drawn in 1925.

Private Collection, Toulouse, France (acquired by 1985) Thence by descent to the present owner

Foltyn, an important member of the Czech avant-garde, executed this drawing during his stay in Paris. It is a study for the major painting Imperialism (fig. 1), which depicts a tin man holding a red scythe in his hands. The numbers 14 and 18 echo the span of the First World War and the figure recalls a number of popular culture motifs at the time, such as the Tin Woodman in L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, a figure that has often been read to have political meaning and has its source deep in European folk art. The metallic, cylindric forms in the present work establish a stroing visual link with Fernand Léger, whose works in the late 1910s had been populated by such forms.