Jakub Špaňhel
Dokoupil 12 Years
Artist
Jakub Špaňhel
(1976, Ostrava), Czech
Original Title
Dokoupil 12 Years
Date2003
Mediummixed media on canvas
Dimensions90 × 60 cm
Classificationspaintings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha (Eva and Petr Zeman Collection)
DescriptionJakub Špaňhel is perceived as a great painting talent on the Czech art scene, on which he has been active since the late 1990s. In his expressive gestural painting he managed to synthesise new input from the Western art scene and its innovative technical methods with the tradition of local expressive painting. His canvases are characteristic in their physical painting process, based on the spontaneous gesture and the “liquidity” of form. Špaňhel’s work is situated within the world of objects and he chooses motifs of flowers, monasteries, urban and rural exteriors, which he then paints according to model photographs, postcards or reproductions. The object motifs however open space for his gestural work. The resulting works have a fluid and liquid form which also comes to define the work’s content. His very austere form balances on the threshold between the abstract and the representative, between spirituality and irony, and is a certain reaction to the accelerating tempo of life and the superficiality of the contemporary world. In recent years, his paintings have reacted to the legacies of other artists such as Bohuslav Reynek and Josef Sudek, with Špaňhel using his distinctive gestural painting style and monumentally sized works to capture the magic of certain moments and to convey emotional messages.
This portrait of young Dokoupil (2003) is part of Špaňhel’s loose series of portraits focused on important artists such as Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh, and Bohuslav Reynek; however, portraits of art collectors and other people from the art world can also be seen as belonging to it. These portraits are usually painted based on reproduced images, and thus form a counterpart to Špaňhel’s female nudes, which are, conversely, painted using live models (although the subjects’ identities are not revealed). As is typical for Špaňhel’s style, the childhood appearance of painter Jiří Dokoupil is faintly outlined against a dark background, with gold color defining the facial features and evoking the aura and international acclaim of the artist. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dokoupil, who has periodically returned to the Czech Republic since emigrating to Germany, helped acquaint the Czech art scene with a new, Western approach to painting based on monumental expressivity and a prioritizing form over content.
Jakub Špaňhel (*1976, Karviná) made his first contact with the art scene in the industrial region of Ostrava. Between 1995–2002 he intentionally studied at the more conceptual studios of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, like in the studio of Visual Communication of Jiří David and the studio of Intermedia Work of Milan Knížák, which gave his spontaneous painting a sense for working in cycles and a taste for rational objectivity. Another mentor of Špaňhel’s was Jiří Georg Dokoupil whose experience with Western art supported Špaňhel’s tendency towards expressive monumentality and the serial multiplication of motifs. Špaňhel’s works have regularly appeared at exhibitions since his school years and, after graduating from the Academy, the Prague City Gallery organised a solo exhibition for him. In the following years, he was featured at important group exhibitions thematising new trends in contemporary art (Perfect Tense: Malba dnes, Prague Castle Riding School, 2003). He has had solo exhibitions at the Prague City Gallery (Hens in Hell, 2012), the Václav Špála Gallery (Paintings 1648–2016, 2016), and the Arcimboldo Gallery (Five Lights Above the Water, 2020). His work is included in the collections of institutions such as the National Gallery Prague, the East Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice, the Klatovy / Klenová Gallery, and the Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb, as well as in Richard Adam’s collection and other private collections.
This portrait of young Dokoupil (2003) is part of Špaňhel’s loose series of portraits focused on important artists such as Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh, and Bohuslav Reynek; however, portraits of art collectors and other people from the art world can also be seen as belonging to it. These portraits are usually painted based on reproduced images, and thus form a counterpart to Špaňhel’s female nudes, which are, conversely, painted using live models (although the subjects’ identities are not revealed). As is typical for Špaňhel’s style, the childhood appearance of painter Jiří Dokoupil is faintly outlined against a dark background, with gold color defining the facial features and evoking the aura and international acclaim of the artist. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dokoupil, who has periodically returned to the Czech Republic since emigrating to Germany, helped acquaint the Czech art scene with a new, Western approach to painting based on monumental expressivity and a prioritizing form over content.
Jakub Špaňhel (*1976, Karviná) made his first contact with the art scene in the industrial region of Ostrava. Between 1995–2002 he intentionally studied at the more conceptual studios of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, like in the studio of Visual Communication of Jiří David and the studio of Intermedia Work of Milan Knížák, which gave his spontaneous painting a sense for working in cycles and a taste for rational objectivity. Another mentor of Špaňhel’s was Jiří Georg Dokoupil whose experience with Western art supported Špaňhel’s tendency towards expressive monumentality and the serial multiplication of motifs. Špaňhel’s works have regularly appeared at exhibitions since his school years and, after graduating from the Academy, the Prague City Gallery organised a solo exhibition for him. In the following years, he was featured at important group exhibitions thematising new trends in contemporary art (Perfect Tense: Malba dnes, Prague Castle Riding School, 2003). He has had solo exhibitions at the Prague City Gallery (Hens in Hell, 2012), the Václav Špála Gallery (Paintings 1648–2016, 2016), and the Arcimboldo Gallery (Five Lights Above the Water, 2020). His work is included in the collections of institutions such as the National Gallery Prague, the East Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice, the Klatovy / Klenová Gallery, and the Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb, as well as in Richard Adam’s collection and other private collections.
