Adolf J. Alex: Monks Greeting an Arriving Boat/Seascape ORIGINAL ETCHING 1935
The impelling impetus of the etching was a scene from St. Procopius’ legend bearing some resourceful religious metaphors and allegories. The subject represents a group of monks with their abbot on the riverside waiting for and greeting an arriving boat with a staying man. Alex endeavours to represent the essence of the scene through characteristic poses of personage to show an anxious waiting and greeting as an abstraction one. The landscape was not simplified and represented with a complicated composition of sun, waves, mountains and clouds to highlight the essence of the event. As Fritz von Unruh in Germany, Adolf Jelinek Alex tried to change revolutionary the traditional religious subjects endeavours to avoid common old clichés to create a new language for Christendom.
The hermit Saint Procopius of Sázava (Latin: Procopius Sazavensis, died 25 March 1053) was a Czech canon and hermit, canonised as a saint of the Catholic church in 1204. Procopius was the founding abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Sázava lying South-East of Prague. He has always been one of the most popular Bohemian saints because in early medieval Bohemia his monastery was the only one where the liturgy was celebrated in the Old Slavonic language.
The St. Procopius’ legend was an epic poem of Czech poet and dramatist Jaroslav Vrchlický which was published in the year 1884.
Epoche//Age: #1935
Medium: #etching
Location: #Bohemia
Originality: # The original etching from the cycle «Legend about St. Procopes» was published in number 400 prints in Prague in the year 1935, after the end of printing the plates were demolished. It is print number 280. The paper is Japan
Signature: signed by the author with his seal and monogram AJA in the form of a trefoil
Size (in mm):
With Passe-partout is ca. 345 x 250
The overall size is ca. 200 x 200
The image size is ca. 160 x 160
Size (in inches):
With Passe-partout is ca. 13.6 x 9.8
The overall size is ca. 8 x 8
The image size is ca. 6.2 x 6.2
Condition:
In general, one seems to appreciate the whole condition of the etching as a good one. The passe-partout has a small break don’t touch the design. It means the work of art has no shabbiness on corners including the writings and printings to the front and to the back. There are no stains on the front or on the back. There are no creases or bends, tears or pinholes. There is only a signature as a seal-bearing monogram AJA included in the form of a trefoil.
Artist’s short biography: #Born in provincial Bohemia ADOLF JELÍNEK ALEX (1890-1957) matured into a professional artist of the highest calibre who was best known in Bohemia as an engraver, painter and writer. He graduated from the Prague School of Arts, Architecture and Design before attending the Munich Academy of Fine Art as a resourceful disciple of prof. Janka. Regardless of this fact he developed into a maturer engraver in Prague only at the Prague Fine Art Academy under the strong influence of the famous Graphic School of Max Švabinský penetrated with a social spirit of that time. He is considered be a closer follower of Švabinský but only in the manner of the latter, Alex was being free in his choice of subject whose grounds were the study of representation of motions in the art.
He opted unambiguously for realism to strive from the start to express reality as he objectively saw or imagined it. He preferred to represent moving objects animated or inanimate. Some mystical themes arose in Alex's works after his Italian voyage. As Fritz von Unruh in Germany Adlof J. Alex tried to change revolutionary the tradition religious art. At the beginning his artistic live he succeeds best in portraits and figurative art. His beloved subjects was to depict different kinds of motions of animals. That is why he would like the subjects of horses standing on their hind legs, riders, moving chariots, gypsies and the like, which he could depict with great liveliness and persuasiveness. After his voyage to the Italy he liked to depict some new motives as mystical landscape compositions with ruined architecture as churches and domes chiefly taken from the neighbourhood of Rome. In addition, he also depicts various constructions of the buildings and bridges. There are a lot of his very famous illustrations of books for the various bibliographic editions. There were his numerous etchings for Pushkin’s poetic novel Eugene Onegin in 1923. He has also written and decorated several independent novels. In 1924 he had also participated in the exhibition of Czech graphic artists in Paris and his etching «to the market» was published in the French magazine «L’art et décoration».
There are a lot of his works of art in the Albertinum Museum in Vienna, in the Städel Museum at Frankfurt/Mein, in the National Gallery in Prague.