The all-time high auction price for oil by Filla in Czech – 19,5 million CZK, Adolf Loos Apartment and Gallery, Praha, 2010
The all-time high auction price for oil by Filla in the world – 588 thousand €, Sotheby’s, 2011

Emil Filla was the great pioneer of the Czech cubism already during his study at the Academy, where, at the beginning of the 20th century, totally conservative schooling prevailed. Therefore, Filla had not even completed his studies and started to examine, in a diligent, even art-historian way, the theory and practice of the fast-developing painting art on the West. He sensed the new era of the modern art and he started his own journey to freedom of the expression in painting and he became literally the star of the new Czech art of the 20th century.

Already in the 1930s, he occupied himself in his work with the topic of animal fights, which were the metaphors of the historical war conflicts, but also of the personal creative and mental fights. Filla recorded in his notes that his mission is to achieve an individualistic expression, the manifestation of which is the form in Barbaric nakedness. The painter, throughout his life, even gathered a large archive of various materials, primarily the photographs of art starting from the ancient times. There were many historical pictures of various fights and struggles in his collection, including Picasso´s drawings from the illustrations of Metamorphoses by Ovid, but also for instance the photographs of Romanesque reliefs depicting the fight of an archangel with a dragon, and many confrontations of a bull and a horse, a bull and a man, a lion and a man, a lion and a horse. The motif of struggle and fight was personal to him and therefore he focused on it also in his private collection of photographs, from which he drew the inspiration.
The fight of a man with a bull is also repeated in Filla´s work. Metaphorically, it is the interpretation of the fight with the Cretan bull, which played a significant role in the Cretan religious cult, and appears in many forms in the history of Art. The graphic depicts the figure of a naked man, who kneels under the weight of a defeated bull lying on his shoulders. The face of the man on the graphic has sharp features, typical for the cubistic sculptures – as if it was drawn after the statue of Rodin; next, oversized extremities resemble Picasso´s stylization.
The graphic is one on the first fifty prints, in the end, there were 306 pieces, this is why it belongs to the most valuable and requested ones.
“Filla … is a beautiful example of the seeker for innovative ways, the pioneer yesterday, a mature fine-artist and the creator of a certain typical view on life and the world today.” F.X.Šalda wrote about him and one hundred years later we can only agree with him.
Always, when Filla´s work appears in the auction, the records in the price for sold picture grow up. However, Filla´s artwork is valued not only in the Czech Republic, but there is a great interest in it also in the world auctions.

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

By the beginning of 1930s, Filla starts to show in his creation the erotica and hungry sexuality much more openly, in the shape of the gigantic women. Filla´s “monster women” create the impression of an evolution anomaly, however, in the same time, they symbolize the fruitful massiveness of the Mother Earth, that is based on the male and female principles. “Mother Earth” is the foundation and the source of existence – without her, there is no life.
This period of Filla´s creation is also characterized by the accurate term „monster Titanism” where the carnality that is experienced by the senses and expressed by a fantasy form changes into shapes of fully self-sufficient plastic, which, by its erotic content attain – under the influence of surrealism – the fantastic emotionality of prehistorically primitive idols and imaginations. The pictures of women in oversized proportions, based on anatomic deformations speak – they are telling us that this is a figure, but from a strange world of modern mythology.
Woman in Armchair is monster-like, ugly and primitive. Suddenly, she emerged from the depths of the Earth and decide to sit down in our living room on the armchair. Absolutely shamelessly, she scratches her naked breast by one of her hands, and at the same time, paradoxically, she covers her gaping mouth by the other hand. The fat legs, in spite of their gigantic proportions, can´t hide the clearly contoured lap of this woman. The whole body of this female giant from the tribe of Titans, is melting on the armchair that hardly contains her. She is a woman from a different world, from the world before and after the human existence, and this is why she is special.
Bibliography:
Vojtěch Lahoda: Emil Filla, Academia Praha 2007, page. 348.

Published:
in catalogue of Kupka Exhibition in Musée d´Orsay, Vers de temps nouveaux KUPKA ouevres graphiques 1894-1912, Paris;
in catalogue of Kupka Exhibition in Kunsthaus Zürich 1976, page 243
in catalogue Kupka 1871-1957, Průvodce výstavou, NG Praha, 2018, str. 23

Exhibited at the French Institute Praha, 14.9.-3.11.2016.

The highest price achieved in auction – 78 million CZK in the year 2019, Galerie Kodl, Prague.
The highest price achieved in auction for Kupka´s graphic – 720 thousand CZK in the year 2018, auction house Sýpka, Prague.
The highest known price for graphics achieved in gallery sale – 500 thousand CZK in the year 2016, Prague.

At the turn of the century, when Kupka already lived and worked in Paris, there is still echoing the Wien Art Nouveau in his work. Kupka felt very close to it because it was emphasizing ornament, not noticing the reality that much. The beginning in Paris is not easy – Kupka, to make his living, works for various magazines, draws fashion designs and posters for chanson singers on Montmartre. Although in his illustrations, satirical drawings and graphics he expresses his criticism to society and the need to lecture people about the evolution of man – he still believes that the Art must be ethical. Graphics The Fools, Biblioman and other drawings he exhibits in the year 1900 on the world exhibition in Paris in the foreign artists department – just like Alfons Mucha.
The Fools symbolize metaphor of the world of that time when the chase after success and money together with nationalistic prejudices was on. Tragicomically slogging people are watched by clowns on something similar to theatre stage. Various motifs introduce ills of the French society of that time in satirical exaggeration. This lithograph is dedicated by Kupka´s hand to French symbolism poet Alexander Mercereau (1884-1945), whom Kupka knew in person and who in the year 1914 prepared for SVU Mánes an exhibition of French Modern Art.
No similar large format graphic sheet appears in auction sale anymore.

The highest achieved price for Toyen´s work (oil on canvas) in the auction sale – 700 thousand €, May 2016, Auction House Thierry-Lannon & Associés in Brest
The highest price achieved in the home auction sale – 36 million CZK in the year 2017, Galerie Kodl
Video record from the auction
The highest price achieved in the home auction sale for print – 216 thousand CZK in the year 2012, Galerie Kodl
The highest price achieved in the home auction sale for drawing – 1.2 million CZK in the year 2009

Toyen and the poet and dramatist Radovan Ivsić knew each other in the surrealistic group since 1950s, but their cooperation started only ten years later. Toyen came to him in the year 1966 with fine ink drawings of which she spoke as the dream shards. In the end, a marvellous cassette-book with twelve illustrations came to existence. The cassette with an erotic game of a little ball and a hole was of the design by Toyen also. The drawings depict a dream penetration of human and animal body parts where the erotic tension is highly visible. It´s not clear there where the desire and passion ends and suffering starts. Petting is being transformed into torture. For this volume, the special ornamental decoration is typical – human body parts giving the impression of a tattoo (she followed up the idea of Štyrský about infants with tattoos depicting pornography motifs). Fragments of dream shards appear also in her older works – like Divider, Eclipse or the Stream in the Faraway. These graphics are emblematic of Toyen´s ability to combine human and animal elements, without human body ever appearing there. On this folio fingers seductively penetrate the hair, twisting it around themselves in the moment between the caress and violence.
Individual prints of the volume have been offered in the Czech auctions sporadically since the year 2002 – blak & white, or coloured also.