Josef Capek Signed Czech Cubist Oil on Canvas for Auction at 888 Auctions on Dec 20, 2018

Josef Capek Signed Czech Cubist Oil on Canvas – December 20, 2018

Oil on canvas, framed. Featuring a Cubist style still life scene. Signed Josef Capek on the lower left corner. 61 x 45.5 cm (24 x 17.9 inches). PROVENANCE: Southern Ontario estate.

Click Here to view Lot #140 – Josef Capek Signed Czech Cubist Oil on Canvas

Josef Capek Life and Impact

Josef Capek (1887-1945) was a Czech artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet. He invented the word robot, which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel Capek. Capek was born in Hronov, Bohemia (Austria-Hungary, later Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic) in 1887.

First a painter of the Cubist school, he later developed his own playful, minimalist style. He collaborated with his brother Karel on a number of plays and short stories; on his own, he wrote the utopian play Land of Many Names and several novels, as well as critical essays in which he argued for the art of the unconscious, of children, and of ‘savages’. Interestingly, on a side note, his brother considered Josef as the true inventor of the term ‘robot.  The word robot derived from the Czech word for “forced labor.”  Also as a cartoonist, he worked for Lidové Noviny, a newspaper based in Prague.

Due to his critical attitude towards national socialism and Adolf Hitler, he was arrested after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. He wrote Poems from a Concentration Camp in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he died in 1945. In June 1945 Rudolf Margolius, accompanied by Capek’s wife Jarmila Capková, went to Bergen-Belsen to search for him. His remains were never found. In 1948 the court officially set the date of his death, the day which he did not survive being 30 April 1947. His illustrated stories Povídání o Pejskovi a Kocicce (All About Doggie and Pussycat) are considered classics of Czech children’s literature.