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 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.

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´s interest in the iconography of animal fights – pertinently fights between a man and an animal – is traditionally put in context with the rise of fascism in Europe, mainly in Germany after the election of Adolf Hitler to the position of the Chancellor in the year 1933. The dry point drawing Horse Fight from the year 1935 is possible to consider to be the genesis of extensive graphic cycle Fights and Struggles, which came into existence in the year 1936. At that time, an Old Testament prophetic vision of Fascism was born from the passion of the struggle.

Like Pablo Picasso, who entered the service to his homeland in the year 1937 by today famous Guernika, Emil Filla influenced the public opinion by allegories of struggle and by his work he significantly supported the fight against Fascism. Filla´s fight starts by defining the symbol of the ancient Greek hero Hérakles and his struggles – in monumental scenes at first, later the artist transfers the topic of the fight and struggle to graphic techniques also.

In the depiction of the motif of fight and struggle, for the first time, the form motif of brutal stereotype comes to the scene of the graphic folio. It is unreal so that it would talk one into believing the horrifying reality and the fierce destruction of the victim. The animal that is being attacked by a predator, another animal or a human, is knocked down to the ground, it falls to the knees of the front legs. Together with this movement, that gives the whole front half of the body a violent fall to the ground, a contradictory movement of the rear half of the body upwards takes place at the same time. Abruptly contradictory movement in a real body would be possible only in the case of breaking the spine of the animal, which would be caused by its spiral distortion in the axis of the body – to the shape of flat placed “S“. Over the defeated horse, the second horse with victorious roaring, rising on its rear legs up, is ready to give its rival the last deadly blow by its front hooves…

Bibliography:
Čestmír Berka: Emil Filla, grafické dílo, Odeon 1968, pages: 72-73, 270.
Vojtěch Lahoda: Emil Filla, Academia Praha 2007, page 493-495.

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´s interest in the iconography of animal fights – pertinently fights between a man and an animal – is traditionally put to context with the rise of fascism in Europe, mainly in Germany after the election of Adolf Hitler to the position of the Chancellor in the year 1933. The dry point drawing Horse fight from the year 1935 is possible to consider to be the genesis of extensive graphic cycle Fights and Struggles, which came into existence in the year 1936. At that time, an Old Testament prophetic vision of Fascism was born from the passion of the struggle.

Like Pablo Picasso, who entered the service to his homeland in the year 1937 by today famous Guernika, Emil Filla influenced the public opinion by allegories of struggle and by his work he significantly supported the fight against Fascism. Filla´s fight starts by defining the symbol of the ancient Greek hero Hérakles and his struggles – in monumental scenes at first, later the artist transfers the topic of the fight and struggle to graphic techniques also.

In the depiction of the motif of fight and struggle, for the first time, the form motif of brutal stereotype comes to the scene of the graphic folio. It is unreal so that it would talk one into believing the horrifying reality and the fierce destruction of the victim. The animal that is being attacked by a predator, another animal or a human, is knocked down to the ground, it falls to the knees of the front legs. Together with this movement, that gives the whole front half of the body a violent fall to the ground, a contradictory movement of the rear half of the body upwards takes place in the same. Abruptly contradictory movement in a real body would be possible only in the case of breaking the spine of the animal, which would be caused by its spiral distortion in the axis of the body – to the shape of flat placed “S“. Over the defeated horse, the second horse with victorious roaring, rising on its rear legs up, is ready to give its rival the last deadly blow by its front hooves…

Bibliography:
Čestmír Berka: Emil Filla, grafické dílo, Odeon 1968, pages: 72-73, 270.
Vojtěch Lahoda: Emil Filla, Academia Praha 2007, page 493-495.

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

In Filla´s graphic still lives from the years 1930-1936, the whole space of the image is unified into one pure flat warp, which is substantiated in a matter-of-fact way by the desk of the table, visible from the direct perspective The table located in the centre of the composition firmly frames and closes the emptiness of the illusive, infinite space that is disappearing to the infinity. The perception that is moving away from the real being of an individual thing, now takes a much larger area of reality – the grouping of more things on the table in the environment of a room. The things lying on the table are now – as solid objects – interpreted by the painter from their individual specific sides and attributes, which the artist could perceive thanks to his highly active creative and aesthetic relation to the world.

The graphics Still life with Lamp and Fish is based on the contrast of light and shadow, understood as the morality aspects and the meaning value of light and the depicted things, which were for certain not chosen randomly.
All three objects depicted on the table (the lamp, the fish, and the egg in a glass) symbolically refer to the figure of Jesus Christ. The lamp, in Christian iconography, is connected with the symbolic of light. Jesus says: “I am the light of the world. He who follows me, shall not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12-13) The lamps are a shining light of souls that was ignited by the sacrament of baptism. Their oil represents the fruit of good works. The trays of the lamps are the human bodies, in which hearts, the treasure of pure conscious must be preserved.
Also, the fish was a very common symbol of Jesus Christ in the early Christianity. Already in the Antiquity, it had the role of a saviour and this meaning was transferred to Christ. The fish became the symbol of Christ for its Greek name: „ichtys“, where the individual letters are also the initial letters of Greek words – Iésus Christos Theú Hyipos Sótér (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour) The sign of fish thus became the logo of faith, depicted not only on walls but engraved to gravestones and sarcophagus.
The egg is the symbol of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and of the eternal life, the hope for the infinite being, introduced illustratively as disposing of the dark and clutching material shell of the earthly being. In this sense, the Easter eggs were sanctified to the honour of the resurrection of Christ.

Bibliography:
Čestmír Berka: Emil Filla, grafické dílo, Odeon 1968, str.: 36, 270.

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

On the graphic folios from Filla´s so-called “white period”, the contours of things and their shapes are engraved into a white space by a distinct black line that comes out from the procedure and shape logic of the drypoint. This technique enables Filla to virtuously use a wide range of expressive possibilities of an engraved line and scratch. His line is once lyrically excited, the second time it is austere, even abstractly cold. On the still lives, Filla very well uses hatching by variably thick nets of lines and stratifies airy depths of distant perspectives. The cups, vases and trays become the mighty bells whose voices thunder through the spaces of spherical arches of grape wine, apples or pears and resound to vast distances.

Still Life with Vase of Flowers and Tray is the classical example of the “white period” still life. It embodies all the style attributes and signs of this period in a balanced harmony, lively sensuality, sweet contentment of the harmony between the spirit and the nature, lyrical and soft carnality of shapes, the interconnection of organic, the interconnection of flesh with gentle hints of abstract, polyphonic order of the complex, And in the radiant sunshine, somewhere from the depths of being of all things, a hardly understandable, mysterious and irresistible sadness, a sombre melancholy springs. Gently engraved webs of black lines can boldly be compared to the most delicate nets of Rembrandt´s drawings, catching in its structure the darkness – against it, Filla´s webs capture the light.

The whole space of this still life is unified into one clear flat structure, which is substantiated in a matter-of-fact way by the desk of the table, visible from the direct perspective. The desk of the table firmly frames and closes the emptiness of the illusive and infinite space that disappears into the infinity. The things on the table, as whole objects, are interpreted by the painter from the point of view of their individual specific features and attributes, which the artist could perceive thanks to his highly active creative and aesthetic relation to the world.

Bibliography:
Čestmír Berka: Emil Filla, grafické dílo, Odeon 1968, str.: 36, 40-43, 270.

At the beginning of the 1930s, Filla´s work shows much more openly the erotica and desirous sexuality in the shape of giant women. Filla´s “monster women” create the impression of some evolution anomaly, they are flesh and blood, they have the monumental proportions of giants and they do not conform our routine understanding of beauty. They come to us from a different world that is set free from time, they are cursed – like the oriental omnipotent ghosts – into the small shapes of the graphic folios. In the reality, their proportions are gigantic, monumental. They have their right place only as the big frescos on the vast walls of public temples of the future man. The Titan-like woman, sleeping in the armchair with gaping mouth, is as if cursed into immobility by the fine-art legality. The peaceful shapes of gigantic size, volume and contour sound in full and more emphasised than the small shapes in movement. The widespread monster legs with gigantic feet uncover in absolute shamelessness the big black lap, that symbolises the fertile mightiness of the Mother Earth, that is based both on the male and female principles. There is a cage with canary placed on a high leg of the pedestal next to the armchair. The canary is about the same height as the gigantic mouth of the woman.
This drypoint drawing is the subsequent (third) variant of the motif Woman with Canary from the year 1933. On the painting created in the spring of the year 1933, the woman holds a sugar cube between her lips that is being pecked by a canary sitting on her shoulder. Filla saw such scene at home of his friend Dr. Vlastimil Juren, whose little daughter liked to feed her beloved canary like this – Filla even took a photograph of this scene. In the process of time, he came back to the “Catullus” motif and transferred it to aquatint combined with etching and drypoint. The homelike, intimate atmosphere of the drawing is emphasised by the “added” boxer puppy, that is playing with a ball in the right lower corner of the folio.

Bibliography:
Čestmír Berka: Emil Filla, grafické dílo, Odeon 1968, str.: 49,55, 266.