Frantisek Tichy - Two Performers 1932, oil on canvas, 53 x 45 cm, signed and dated lower right: Tichý 32, verso old label of the Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists Prague Provenance: - collection of Dr Evzen Lausman (former lawyer of the National Gallery in Prague) Exhibited. Publicated. Expertise by the renowned expert Professor Jaromir Zemina, enclosed. Professor Jaromir Zemina remarked: “The painting was made in the first half of the 1930s, when Tichy was staying in Paris: it was the most important period for the development of his painting. A significant part of his work at that time consisted of paintings with themes from the life of performers, dancers, and clowns, which had attracted him since he was a boy and which as an adult he came to know thoroughly after arriving in France from the Cirque Pinder in Marseille and then at the Medrano circus in Paris, where he met the famous clowns Fratellini and Grock. Also, the subject of the painting under consideration is a pair of performers, one of whom is lifting the other, who is standing on his hands and balancing. The way Tichy painted this scene was influenced during this period in Paris by the pointillism of Georges Seurat and is characterised by clusters of large patches of colour that give the impression of shimmering and trembling. The composition is based on the contrast of the dark lower part and the light upper part, the colouring consists of dark and light greens, brown in two shades, and pink.” Further consulted with Dr Irena Zantovska Murray HonFRIBA, Dr Jiri Machalicky and Vladimir Lekes.