Topic from the depository: Children
Topic from the depository: Children
Otto Stritzko, Melancholic Girl
gouache, cardboard, 70 x 50 cm

The melancholic girl (she is undated, but she can be included in the works from the 1960s) is painted with tempera on cardboard, Stritzka's favorite technique. The painting shows a modern young lady (with a pink necklace) in the middle of an unspecified baroque garden or park (stylized decorative vases) looking nostalgically into the vault of trees and shrubs. It is a confrontation of youth with the past tense and the inertia of nature - the historical and natural surrounding half-figure is intertwined with a stylized drawing in a kind of forest - an element.

Otto Stritzko (1908 - 1986) was a painter, graphic artist and illustrator, but he subsisted mainly on restoration. From 1940 he lived in the Old Kingdom. He studied at the School of Applied Arts in Prague with prof. Bendy and prof. Hoffbauera. He entered the art scene just before II. World War II, he is therefore a generational peer of the authors of Group 42, however, his work is connected with Catholic modernity. His wife was the daughter of the publisher Josef Florian, his daughter is Juliana Jirousová. His work combines impulses of modern artistic directions - Fauvism, expressionism, surrealism, symbolism. He was also inspired by folk art and, last but not least, the Czech Baroque. In the 1960s, it also absorbed the stimuli of abstract tendencies. The ability to combine genres is characteristic. His painting always shows strong coloristic abilities. In addition to the civil, religious and poetic lines of work, there are also works containing elements of distinctive humor. In the context of Czech art of the 20th century, Stritzka's work is an essential, not yet completely noticed value, which is caused mainly by the deformation of cultural activities during World War II and subsequently by the communist totalitarian regime - the period climate did not wish Stritzka's-type authors.