What I Saw at Jakub Špaňhel’s

Jakub Špaňhel, a considerable personality of contemporary Czech painting, studied at AVU in the studio of Jiří David and Milán Knížák


Free gestures and color simplification typify Špaňhel’s canvasses, but the less color in them, the more personal energy they radiate, bordering perhaps on obsession.
A regular visitor to local exhibitions is probably familiar with his landscapes, church interiors, portraits, and flowers. Faces seem to seep through as from a dream, they convey a strong personal experience (admiration, anxiety and disillusion), the landscapes are stereotypically melancholy, even painful. The paintings of church interiors raise a question: what creates the impression of this exact space? Špaňhel paints a feeling and doesn’t just name details (because the material is black?), he paints a secret or emptiness. The flowers frequently remind me of pieces of fresh meat, it is nearly alive still, but not anymore, the slide of evanescence is polished by desperate beauty.
Most recently, Špaňhel has been working on a series of female portraits and nudes. They are dark pictures. From models, he paints figures that are slightly larger than life, whose nakedness is absolute, almost aggressive, albeit sometimes hidden beneath golden hair. It is a nakedness bare of promises with no similarities to any ideal image. Špaňhel avoids using women’s bodies as a symbol. In his pictures, no girls grin coyly, instead beings are enveloped by darkness who shine like an illuminated city sky.

Intermezzo:


What good is a gal for a guy?

(I don’t know)

Probably something other than himself
A feast for the eyes, hands and tongue,
A warm little corner, distraction, a longing to rest
Something you can’t look at directly, the burning front part of the body
A third kidney?
And a challenge to fight all this because it keeps repeating itself?

What good is a woman for a painter?

Intense reality
ENERGY AND LIGHT
A classical artistic subject

A grateful spectator
Helena Šmídová

01.01.2005