Master of melancholy

Since his work was rediscovered 30 years ago, the name Alén Diviš (1900-56) has become almost synonymous with "outsider" in Czech art. For decades after his death, his work lay forgotten. It was brought back from obscurity with an exhibition at Old Town Hall in 1988. A large retrospective in 2005 at Galerie Rudolfinum tried to sift through the myths and legends surrounding this artist, reintroducing him in a clear light for a new generation of viewers.

The current show at Galerie U Betlémské kaple is the first large sales exhibition of his work, presenting around 40 pieces, predominantly drawings from the 1950s. There are also a few earlier oil paintings in the show, such as Woman With a Red Dress from 1932, when Diviš was living in Paris.

The drawings that comprise the heart of the exhibition are illustrations Diviš made for Jaromír Karel Erben's 19th-century collection of ballads The Bouquet (Kytice), and for poems and tales by Edgar Allan Poe. There are more Poe illustrations, but the atmosphere and light in the Erben illustrations show a sensitivity for the poetry's haunting mystery and magic that the Poe drawings don't match. The exhibition also contains seven biblical scenes, including The Tree of Knowledge and Jonah and the Whale.

Born at the turn of the 20th century, Diviš lived a life that itself seems like something out of Poe, or perhaps Kafka. He started his career on a path typical for Czech artists of his time - first studies at the academy, then a move to Paris to live and paint around 1924. Diviš was in Paris when France entered World War II, and his life took an unexpected turn when he and several other Czech artists connected with the House of Czechoslovak Culture in Paris - established as a refuge for Czechs fleeing Nazi-occupied Bohemia - were accused of espionage and locked up in the notorious La Santé prison, where Diviš spent several months in solitary confinement.

After his time in prison, the artist was transported to a series of concentration camps in France, Morocco and Martinique. It was at a camp in Morocco that Diviš was first inspired to make drawings on the theme of "Wedding Shirt" from The Bouquet. Finally, he escaped to the United States, where he spent five years living in New York's Czech enclave on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Diviš returned to his homeland after the war, in 1947, and held two successful solo shows in Prague. The first one presented work from his New York period, and the second featured drawings inspired by The Bouquet. But, after the communist coup in 1948, his somber art was marginalized, and he withdrew into isolation. In his later years, Diviš continued making illustrations for Erben's ballads as well as Poe's poems and stories. But only his illustrations for the "Wedding Shirt" were published in his lifetime.

The drawings currently on display are created above all from light and dark. They reflect the poverty of Diviš's later life, when he had no money for proper art supplies and made drawings using ordinary coal on non-art paper. His use of light and dark, as well as the melancholy spirit of menace infusing his works at times, recall Rembrandt or Goya.

Diviš's work does not really fall into line with any of the main artistic currents of his time. Influences of Expressionism, Cubism and Surrealism are detectable, and at times his work anticipates Art Brut and Informel. But Diviš's style is individualistic and heavily influenced by his own personal history.

Death, atonement and redemption became recurring themes, and his drawings of passages from the Bible seem to indicate that, toward the end of his life, he looked to religion for comfort. Diviš lived out his life sick and impoverished, and, when he died in 1956, his art was essentially forgotten.

When his work was finally brought to public attention again in 1988, it was pointedly ignored by the state-controlled media. News about the Old Town Hall exhibition spread by word of mouth until visitors found the doors locked and a police guard standing nearby.

The sad fate of Diviš was shared by many artists born in the early years of the turbulent 20th century. After coming of age in the democratic First Republic - then enjoying the Paris experience that many Czech artists shared in those days - Diviš had his life shattered by the Nazis and then again by the communists. Though he is considered an "outsider," he is at the same time strongly emblematic of his place and times.

Mimi Fronczak Rogers can be reached at
Features@praguepost.com