The Czech surrealist – Josef Vylet'al

This auction offers a keyhole into the artistic world of Josef Vyleťal – a portal between the rational world and the subconscious. In his dreamlike imagery, distorted figures, symbols and moods emerge from a place where our usual spatial and temporal rules seem to be suspended.

The works in the auction are characterised by fragmented figures set against meticulously painted backgrounds, where the unsettling and hallucinatory exist alongside the tranquil. Faces are concealed or dissolve, while eggs and hands recur as central symbols. The eggs can be seen as universal human archetypes of birth and rebirth, and together with the ominous hands, the figures become subjects of metamorphosis.

Vyleťal’s trolls recur in different emotional states, with eggs appearing as eyes. His distinctive surrealism also extended into the world of film through posters and set design, primarily for horror films. Amongst other projects, he created material for the Czech theatrical release of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in 1970, as well as the film poster for Juraj Herz’s Beauty and the Beast, which was awarded a prize at the Chicago International Film Festival.

In a subtle and mysterious way, Vyleťal explores horror through its intersection with the psychological, and through the ways in which the boundary between the real and the unreal can become blurred. This auction offers an opportunity to approach a distinctive artistic practice in which dreams, symbolism and the subconscious take centre stage – and where the viewer becomes the key to interpretation. Browse the auction and place a bid today.