Bocian, signed and dated.
Mixed media on canvas mounted on a stretcher. Landscape format, representing an abstract composition in ochre tones, with sinuous white, black and red forms.
Signed "Bocian" and dated 1949 at the bottom of the canvas. Re-entangled canvas, that is to say fixed on an already existing canvas. Re-oiling probably done in the 1980's.
Bocian (1912-2002), whose real name is Bohumîr Strohalm, is of Czechoslovak origin and naturalized in France.
He was born in Stavkov (Czechoslovakia), he was a student of the School of Applied Arts in Czechoslovakia for 4 years. He arrived in Paris in 1938 and joined the French army during the war.
After the liberation, he continued his studies at the University of Montpellier and then at the University of Aix-en-Provence. He rarely showed his work to the public but participated, from 1949, in the Salon des Artistes Indépendants in Paris and then in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1973.
He was first a draftsman, then a painter. He used mixed techniques and from 1950, he realized large lyrical abstract compositions. He will execute plastic reliefs from the 1960s.
From January 12 to February 12, 1954 he was invited by André Breton to exhibit at the gallery "À l'Étoile scellée".
He returned to live in the Czech Republic in the 1990s with his wife and was the subject of a major retrospective in 1997-1998.
Sources: E.Benezit,Dictionary of painters sculptors drawers and engravers,Gründ, Paris, 1999, Volume 2, p.43