(1935) Head of a Man – original graphical sheet bound into bibliophilia no. 54
Emil Filla

Popis

Etching, 1935, 22,7 cm x 17 cm, Denoted right bottom E. F.
Signed right bottom: Emil Filla

The highest achieved price for oil on canvas by Emil Filla on the Czech auction market: 19.5 million CZK, Adolf Loos Apartment and Gallery, Prague, 2010
The highest achieved price for oil on canvas by Emil Filla on the world auction market: 588 thousand €, Sotheby’s, 2011

Filla went through his „HEADS “ by his fingers first, felt them from every side and created them as statues at first (for instance Head I., 1913 and Head II., 1914). What is special about them is that they are built as big, free, and closed three-dimensional statues, which were nevertheless created from building stones that were obtained from simultaneous views in movement around all sides of a real head.

On the contrary, the graphic folio Head of a Man from the year 1935 represents a maverick organic shape, it is a phantasy of an erotic organism, which contains in itself the phallic element (the nose) and the vaginal element (the open mouth). The drawing is characterized by the linearity emphasized to the maximum “by one draw”, typical for the graphics of figures and heads of Filla´s latter period.

Bibliography:
Čestmír Berka: Emil Filla, grafické dílo, Odeon 1968, pages: 23, 269.
Vojtěch Lahoda: Emil Filla, Academia Praha 2007, pages 455-456.

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