Jiří Peca - Portraits and Paintings of Prague

Jiří Peca's paintings and portraits exhibit a distinct expressiveness both in composition as well as in colour.

His work is characterised by an overall expressive sensibility towards painting rather than by an attempt to be part of the expressionistic trend. His specific style of painting and spontaneous artistic language hint at his individualism, which on the one hand guards its freedom while on the other hand assumes full responsibility for the act of creation. Peca's painting is lofty in both use of space and gesture, his rich and compact use of artistic space is based on a particular dominant colour value, which is further developed often using a marked impasto technique. Further thick layers of colour bring the mass to life and create a dynamic composition.

The city of Prague, in which the artist lives and which he portrays, is a mix of experienced histories almost forgotten with the passing of time - a blending of Czech, German and Jewish cultures. Peca's artistic subjects often are secluded scenes of gothic architecture representing a time when Prague was a European metropolis and a crossroads of the educated elite. The dynamism of these buildings, with their strong vertical accent and striking colours reflecting both the artist's imagination as well as the promise of the city's hidden secrets, provide a powerful, communicative and aesthetic artistic essence.

Due to limited foreign contacts and limited access to information, Czech art in the second half of the 20th century developed separately from the rest of the art world. Czech artists never totally ceased to be part of the cultural consciousness, but their artistic development continued behind a curtain, more introverted. Not only did they create more "contemporary" art, but artists retained a certain level of individualism or even isolation. In painting, for instance, Czech expressionism was less wild and more genre-oriented and retained its intimacy in both form and expression. It was precisely in this environment that Jiří Peca's artistry was formed. His portraits show the clear influence of genre painting, but contain the artist's unique stamp. Already at first glance we can feel the presence of the subject and by extension the painter's great psychological ability and capacity for empathy. His portraits are painted with a lightness and naturalism which reveal the author's talent. If, however, we look deeper into the paintings, we discover that the important thing is the moment of personal connection with the object depicted -the so-called "moment" of the painting, its composition and action. Perhaps for this reason the paintings are sometimes full of restlessness, contradictions and conflict, while at other times they are unexpectedly calm, calling for inner harmony.

Jiří Peca's paintings leave one with a sense of the author's unique authenticity - a pleasant sign of independence in today's over-mediated world. This autonomy of artistic structures, and the ability to name and identify them, is an accurate statement on the nature of painting. The conception of a painting as an illusion of spatial structures characterises the very essence of painting as a fictive depiction. Similar subjects may be depicted as we know them from our experience outside the world of pictures, while at other times some of their features might be suppressed or highlighted. Precisely this aspect of painting as perfect fiction is confirmed and represented in the work of Jiří Peca.

The multilayered, intricate and internally structured play with illusion that is painting -and the joy of painting - confirm its legitimacy in the context of contemporary art.

Claudine Končinská