Pravoslav Kotík (1889-1970)

Design for a Stained-Glass Window for St. Vitus Cathedral (Saint John the Baptist), circa 1940, mixed media on cardboard, signed in the upper right P. Kotík, also signed on the reverse P. KOTÍK, painting dimensions 119 × 99.5 cm, overall dimensions with frame 129 × 109.5 cm, original period framing.

Enclosed “Osvedceni” from the National Heritage Institute in Prague.

Expert opinion: PhDr. Rea Michalová, Ph.D.

From the report: The assessed work “Design for a Stained-Glass Window for St. Vitus Cathedral (St. John the Baptist)” is an authorially indisputable and thematically unique work by Pravoslav Kotík, a prominent representative of Czech modernism—an artist who did not succumb to theoretical dogmas and had the courage to experiment artistically. In the individual phases of his career, he processed the impulses of Social Realism, (Neo)Classicism, late Cubism, the civilist movement of the 1940s, and, as one of the first in Czechoslovakia, he also engaged with postwar abstraction in a highly original manner.

The submitted work is thematically unique and undoubtedly of collector’s interest; it documents an important artistic commission in the turbulent period of the Second World War, initiated by the competition announced in 1940 for the decoration of the Chapel of St. John the Baptist in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. A number of our leading artists participated in this competition; besides Pravoslav Kotík, these included, for example, Jan Bauch, Alois Wachsman, Karel Svolinský, Jaroslav Vodrážka, and others. The competition proceeded in several rounds, and the artists worked with the utmost dedication. However, as the wartime period was not favorable to projects of this kind, the original intention was ultimately not realized. The Chapel of St. John the Baptist in the medieval section of the cathedral was not completed, and the cathedral remained as it had been built in the nineteenth century, retaining its pseudo-historical appearance to this day.

The submitted work “Design for a Stained-Glass Window for St. Vitus Cathedral (St. John the Baptist)” brilliantly demonstrates all the artistic qualities that characterize Kotík’s oeuvre: a sense for generous composition, a masterful organization of color within space, virtuosity of detail, and the dynamism of gesture culminating in monumentality. From this work one can literally sense how fascinated the artist was by the stained-glass technique and how he made use of all the possibilities that this medium offers. One can only regret that “Design for a Stained-Glass Window for St. Vitus Cathedral (St. John the Baptist)”, which ingeniously illuminated the gloom of wartime and offered hope, was never realized.