Karel Cerny - Lovers by the Pond 1951, oil on canvas, 90 x 100 cm, signed and dated upper left: K. Černý S 51 Provenance: - collection of Dr. Pelikan, Prague - significant Prague collection Exhibited. Publicated. Expertise by art historian Dr Nada Rehakova, enclosed. Dr Rehakova, remarked: “The motif of lovers runs through the entire work of Karel Cerny. And if his paintings of lovers from the 1930s and 1940s symbolize unfulfilled love, perhaps even a "Preislerian" longing for love, the present painting "Lovers at the Pond" from 1951 has grown out of somewhat different roots. In the very background of the motif stands a concrete sensory experience of the South Bohemian landscape, and in the monumentalizing simplified form we can recognize both an orientation towards Fauvist decorativism derived from the immediate experience of French painting and a natural continuity with his wartime themes of lovers, shifted from a more restrained form. A conscious link is the use of the intense blues that are so typical of the nostalgic balladry of Cerny's paintings. The 1951 painting "Lovers at the Pond" is one of the artist's most important works from this period.” Expertise by leading expert Professor Jaromir Zemina, enclosed. Professor Zemina, remarked: “It is undoubtedly one of Karel Cerny's most extensive South Bohemian landscapes, combining three motifs typical of the artist: the moonlit night, the water surface and the embracing lovers. A generous artistic conception and a highly poetic, truly magical mood characterise this beautiful painting. Its rich sonority of colour proves convincingly that Cerny was one of the greatest Czech colourists of the 20th century.” Expertise by expert Karel Srp, enclosed. Dr Srp remarked: “At the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, Karel Cerny arrived at a significant purification and simplification of his artistic approach. He thus achieved a significant increase in emotional effect, in which the space of the painting approached that of a stage, where the reality depicted took on almost the nature of a theatre backdrop. Cerny precisely separates the individual visual planes, leaving each motif, whether figurative, floral, or natural phenomenon, with its own character; with some exaggeration, one could say that he merged the lessons of modern painting and ‘le Douanier’ Rousseau. The whole picture is created by the effective combination of linearly defined morphology and flatly applied colour, which deliberately lacks any graded transitions. This new approach of Cerny's was evident in “Lovers by the Pond”. Here he decided to assign the pictorial centre to the calm blue surface, around which he concentrated all the action, both the lovers and the bushes in the foreground, along with the bridge on the left and the house on the right. He enclosed the composition with the forest, emphasised by the curve of the hill, above which shines a bright white moon, encircled by a black ring. Blue and its refracted shades, in confrontation with white and black, became the basic setting of the painting: while the moon is white and black, the lovers, on the other hand, are rendered as dark bodies accentuated by a white silhouette. Against this colour field, any other tone stands out, even if it is only subtle, such as the red roof of the house or the woman's hair. The painting underscores the basic psychic tendency of Cerny, which was anguish, forming the inner content of his work. In addition to this painting, there exists a larger version of it, enlarged to include several buildings. From the first glance, the painting is highly effective, managing to dominate the space and draw attention to itself, while also being very subtle and non-intrusive. It reveals the great tact of Cerny as a painter.” Consulted further with Dr Irena Zantovska Murray HonFRIBA, Dr Jiri Machalicky and Vladimir Lekes.