Jan Bauch (1898-1995)

PROMETHEUS

Oil on canvas, 76x60 cm (87x70,5 cm), signed lower center "Jan Bauch". Titled on the verso "Prométheus". Framed. This striking expressive figurative composition represents one of the high points of Jan Bauch’s oeuvre, in which his intensely emotional, existentially charged painterly language manifests itself in full. The twisted, deformed figure, captured at a moment of extreme physical and psychological tension, is rendered with urgent immediacy both in colour and gesture. Bauch employs a dense impasto layer of paint, with brush and palette knife strokes accumulating in places into a relief-like structure. The palette is built on a contrast of warm ochres and oranges with intense accents of purple, blue and green, heightening the dramatic tension of the scene. The deformation of the figure — typical of the artist’s work — is not gratuitous here, but serves as a means of expressing inner struggle, suffering and spiritual exhaustion. A characteristic example of existential expressive figuration that appears in the artist’s work during the second half of the 1970s. Condition A.