Frantisek Janousek

An outstanding painter, Frantisek Janousek, was one of the foremost artists on the Czech scene in the first half of the 20th century. He attended a teacher training college in Prague and subsequently studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts (1919−1922) where his teacher was Vojtěch Hynais. He then undertook study trips to Vienna and Germany. On his return he worked as a teacher until he received a military pension and was able to devote himself full-time to painting. He showed his work at prestigious exhibitions of the period, including the famous Poezie 32. Initially his works were neo-classical in style with elements of cubism but later the cubist elements predominated and at the end of the 1920s surrealist tendencies appeared in his oeuvre. Paintings from that period were also shown at the House of Art in Ostrava in 1927. After 1933 amoeba-like shapes start to appear in his paintings, where they formed clusters of capillaries and bladders. His paintings were among the first to react to the worsening political situation in Europe and the creeping onset of fascism. The paintings are full of monsters evoking the looming danger. Their leitmotiv became the feeling of evil and brutal violence that grow in the irrational landscapes of timelessness.