Grey shadows

Information

With Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957), Joseph Sima represents one of the great figures of French-Czechoslovakian art in the 20^th century, and participated actively in the artistic relations of the time between Paris and Prague.  It was in Prague, where he trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, that he discovered Impressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist painting.   After 1926, living in France and naturalised as a French citizen, he frequented the Surrealists while remaining independent of the movement.  In his painting he communicates sudden impressions, inspired by the great forces of nature such as lightning and storms.  His Grey shadows belongs to the Remembrances series, painted by Sima during the final ten years of his life, large-scale works fusing earth and sky, matter and light.  Here, light eats away at matter, blurring its contours and bringing out minute changes in tone in an indeterminate space from which all semblance of life seems to have been driven away.