He undertook several study trips to Paris (1923, 1927, 1931) and to Germany (1921 and 1922). Together with Pravoslav Kotík, Karel Holan and Karel Kotrba, they founded the Ho-Ho-Ko-Ko group, later called the Social Group (1924–1927). He was a member of the Umělecká beseda group (since 1920), SVU Mánes (1927–1930, 1939–1949) and SČUG Hollar (since 1945). In the years 1947–1958 he worked as a professor at the Academy of Arts in Prague, in the years 1950–1954 he was its rector and between the years 1954–1957 its vice-rector.
In the early days of his work, Miloslav Holý was mainly interested in life in the proletarian suburbs of Prague, he found inspiration in V. van Gogh, P. Cézanne and E. Munch. In the second half of the twenties, his interest in the landscape, especially the urban landscape, grew. In addition to painting, he also devoted himself to graphics, especially lithographs and etchings, in which the theme of the life of ordinary people played a prominent role. Later (after 1927), his palette brightens, his handwriting relaxes, and his interest turns to the vital nature of southern Bohemia, flower and fruit still lifes, but also to portraits and nudes. After retiring (in 1958) until the end of his life, in addition to painting corners of Prague and creating still lifes, he devoted himself mainly to landscape painting in the vicinity of Slatina nad Zdobnicí in the Orlické Mountains, where the human figure once again became part of nature.
On the occasion of the anniversary of the birth of this important Czech artist, which falls precisely in the month of October, we selected from our collections in Jihlava the painting Yellow Autumn by the road in Jenerálka, dated 1958. This tempera on canvas is an example of Holý's fresh sovereign painting, his masterpiece with intense color and capturing the momentary experience of the atmosphere of the selected landscape corner. Here, Holý was interested in a small section of landscape with a figurative staff in the foreground and a bend in the road in the Prague district of Dejvice, where there is a natural rock monument and also the settlement of Jenerálka with the castle of the same name. Jenerálka is one of the places with the oldest settlement in Prague. It is the largest and most famous Paleolithic site in Prague, part of Štorch's novel The Mammoth Hunters takes place here, and it is also a significant geological and landscape element with the occurrence of protected plant species.
Jana Bojanovská