Oldřich Blažíček (1887 – 1953)

In the Prague Loreto, 1937, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left O. Blažíček 1937; exhibition label and stamps on the reverse. Painting dimensions: 75 × 84 cm; overall dimensions with frame: 90 × 99 cm.

Commentary by PhDr. Naděžda Blažíčková Horová, the painter’s granddaughter:
Blažíček possessed an exceptional and highly distinctive ability to capture sacred interiors, a talent that earned him a professorship in drawing and painting at the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in Prague. Throughout his career, the painter recorded numerous views of church interiors not only in Prague but across Bohemia and Moravia, in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia, as well as in Dalmatia, Paris, Venice, and Rome. Among the most significant of these works is the emotionally conceived space of the Prague Loreto, where the dramatic arrangement of light emerges from a dim, subdued atmosphere created through tonal painting in golden browns and pale greys.

Exhibited many times, for example:

Oldřich Blažíček (1887–1953): Posthumous and Jubilee Survey of the Painter’s Work, 2 June – 30 June 1957, House of Art, cat. no. 282.

Comprehensive Exhibition of Prof. O. Blažíček, April–May 1959, Union of Czechoslovak Visual Artists, Municipal House, Prague, cat. no. 128.

Oldřich Blažíček (1887–1953): A Selection from the Life’s Work, Regional Gallery of the Vysočina Region in Jihlava, 1974, cat. no. 86.

Oldřich Blažíček (1887–1953), Exhibition on the Centenary of the Artist’s Birth, West Bohemian Gallery in Plzeň, 1986–1987.

Oldřich Blažíček (1887–1953), Exhibition on the Centenary of the Artist’s Birth, Central Bohemian Gallery in Prague, 1987.

Oldřich Blažíček (1887–1953), Exhibition on the Centenary of the Artist’s Birth, Horácká Gallery in Nové Město na Moravě, 1987.

Oldřich Blažíček (1887–1953): Comprehensive Exhibition on the 30th Anniversary of the Artist’s Death, Teplice, 1983, cat. no. 60.

Oldřich Blažíček (1887–1953): Comprehensive Exhibition on the 30th Anniversary of the Artist’s Death, Cheb, 1983, cat. no. 55.

Literature – reproduced, for example:

Oldřich Blažíček, Antonín Matějček, Česká grafická Unie a.s., Prague, 1941, full-page reproduction on p. 82.

Oldřich Blažíček, Malá galerie series, Olga Macková, Odeon – Publishing House of Fine Literature and Art, Prague, 1990, full-page reproduction on p. 65.

Oldřich Blažíček (1887–1953): Life and Work. Catalogue Raisonné, Naděžda Blažíčková-Horová, Eliška Havlová, Galerie Kodl / Academia Publishing House, Prague, 2019, no. 600, p. 307.

Provenance: private collection.

The work is lent to the exhibition and is NOT FOR SALE.