Josef Sima, (1891 - 1971), A quatre heures de l´après-midi (Corps Rose), Oil, 1928 - 1929 Reduced buyer’s commission for this lot: 4% including VAT and Droite de Suite. Description of the lot Oil on canvas Dimensions: 135 x 102 cm Signed and dated lower right “Sima 1929” Verso signed, dated and titled “J. Sima Corps rose 1928-1929” Verso old exhibition labels "Musée national d´art moderne Paris, č. 21", "Dr Jean Audoin, Paris", "Le Surréalisme: Corps rose" etc. Framed in the original frame designed and painted by Sima Several times publicated and exhibited / National Gallery in Prague included/ Provenance: - a wedding gift from Sima to the Jouves, a married couple (the famous French poet Pierre Jean Jouve was a close friend of Sima. Sima illustrated his collection of poems Paradise Lost). - collection Blanche Reverchon-Jouve - collection Dr. Jean Audoin, Paris - a premier foreign collection A painting by Josef Sima of this quality has never been on sale at a Czech or foreign auction. It is the first time the painting has been sold at auction. Professor Jaromir Zemina who had been in charge of Svima’s retrospective exhibition in the National Gallery in Prague (1968) remembers the painting as one of the highlights of that successful exhibition. Confirmation of authenticity by Professor Tomas Vlcek attached. Consulted with Professor Jaromír Zemina, Associate Professor Maria Mzykova, and Jiri Machalicky, PhD. An X-ray image made by conservator-restorer specialist Tomas Berger attached. Frantisek Smejkal, the author of the monograph ‘Josef Šíma’ (published by Odeon, 1988), writes: “There is a straight line leading from the painting Atelier to the key painting Corp Rose, which Sima gave to the Jouves as a wedding present. Sima interpreted the painting, which had gone through several development stages, through a fixed childhood memory of a large fire in the town of Jaroměř in 1896, in which a large part of the town square and adjacent buildings burned down. “I went for a walk in the hills surrounding my native town in Bohemia, I was four years old. It was a quiet afternoon. It was hot. The young girl who accompanied me suddenly started running. I followed her and when I reached the top of the hill which had been obscuring the town, I saw her naked calves. The town had been seized by an enormous fire. The smallest details of this event stayed in my memory with extraordinary precision. The flames and the columns of smoke, the movements of the men who fought the fire, I saw everything. In 1929, in a painting called Corp Rose, I painted a female torso against a red background consumed by an inner fire (Sima; “Jouer avec le feu” an interview with R. Sorino). Due to the foreign ownership of the painting, it is not subject to the jurisdiction of the Czech Republic and its Act no. 20/1987 and is therefore export free.