Lot 525 Dα

„The Lines detach themselves from me once I am finished. I view them as a new, unknown landscape. I do not think about anything. I watch them and think about them just with my eyes. I do not look for any other meanings… Sometimes I find an echo of my existential feelings: the ungraspable nature of the world, the lack of clarity that defines human existence, the infiniteness. No certainty! So what remains? Nothing but the joy of living.” (Zdenek Sýkora, Vítek Capek, An interview with Zdenek Sýkora, in: Lenka Sýkorová (ed.), Zdenek Sýkora, Interviews, Prague 2009, p.92)
The present work ‚Lines No. 28' - an early painting from the group of line-based pictures - unites various key aspects of Sýkora's oeuvre of the 1980s, including the variable lengths and widths of the lines which snake themselves across the entire picture surface. With the lines at times extending over the boundaries of the canvas, combined with a particular depth evoked by their layering, Sýkora's quoted sentiment of 'infiniteness' is clearly comprehensible for the viewer. The use of circular forms, as here in black at the centre and light blue at lower left, have also been seen in numerous pictures since the early 1980s. They hint at the 'spots' series from the end of the decade, in which Sýkora softened the sharp contours of the circles and these spots became an image-defining element.