After the exhibition Goose on Kampa, which presented the most important part of Vladimír Železný's collection, headed by Medek's blue-figure paintings and the newly purchased Trauma of Birth by Jindřich Štyrský at the Kampa Museum, which ended in mid-September this year, the Zlatá husa Gallery together with the auction house 1. Art Consulting organized an auction of sixty works from their own depositories.
Vladimír Železný, former director of Nova television and art collector, previously exhibited seventy paintings at Kampa, illustrating the transformation of Czech art from the beginning of the century to the 1960s. These included paintings by the most famous masters, such as Emil Filla, Jan Zrzavý and František Kupka, as well as works by lesser-known figures of modern art, such as Max Kopf, Jaroslav Hněvkovský and Bedřich Piskač. This was perhaps the last opportunity for visitors to see some of the works in public before they ended up with private collectors.
All the paintings offered at the auction were sold, the buyers paid a total of CZK 45.5 million for them, including the auction surcharge.
The most expensive works sold were Jan Zrzavý's painting entitled Dreaming and Emil Filla's The Tray and Two Glasses, each of which fetched CZK 3.8 million with the auction surcharge. Zrzavý's work had a starting price of CZK 3.2 million, while Filla's painting was offered for CZK 2.8 million. Another work by Filo, Still Life with Ice Cream, was also sold with a starting price of CZK 1.2 million. The painting Landscape, painted by Josef Šíma after the Second World War, was sold for CZK 2.9 million, its asking price was CZK 1.8 million.
The new owners also have the works Society at the Table and Still Life on the Table by Antonín Procházka or the painting Structure quasi sans appui by František Kupka from 1937, whose asking price was CZK 1.3 million. The Red Car with a portrait by Kamil Lhoták was also available for purchase.
The most expensive painting auctioned in the Czech Republic this April was an oil painting by František Kupka entitled Conception/Danae (Conception), which sold at the Adolf Loos Apartment and Gallery for CZK 115 million, including the auction premium, for CZK 126.5 million. Until then, Bohumil Kubišta held the record for Czech auction houses with his Old Prague Motive, which sold the previous year for CZK 123.6 million including the auction premium.
Vladimír Železný, a journalist, publicist, politician and passionate collector, began building a collection of Czech art around 1997 and today he has the largest private and publicly accessible collection in the country, managed by the Zlatá husa Gallery in Prague's Dlouhá Street. The basic collection of approximately 1000 works was collected by Železný by the year 2000, and currently the collection has around 1700 items. These include paintings, sculptures and works on paper from the period 1900-1969.
Golden Goose Gallery/ gnews.cz - Jana Černá
Photo: Facebook.com/Galerie Zlatá husa
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