ALEN DIVIS (1900-1956) Nude in an Interior with a Lamp, (19)34 Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left 32 x 40.5 cm Alén Diviš (1900-1956) was a major Czech painter, trained in Prague in the context of Central European Symbolism and Expressionism. He moved to Paris in 1926 in a very precarious situation, and developed his own personal language, on the fringes of the avant-garde and rejecting naturalism. His work explores dark themes such as solitude, confinement, the fragile body, anxiety and ambiguous sexuality, in enclosed, oppressive interiors with repetitive configurations and elements. The bodies of his subjects - lean, rigid and sometimes deformed - raise profound questions about existence and human psychology. After a stay in the United States during the war, his painting became darker and denser. Recognition came late, after his return to Czechoslovakia in 1947. Our painting dates from Alén Diviš's Paris period, in the 1930s. Using an incisive material treatment that makes the knife marks visible in the paint, the artist depicts a cold, frontal nude, devoid of sensuality, standing in a minimalist interior. The whole is a silent scene with a strong psychological charge.