McCormick Gallery | Jan Matulka

Jan Matulka (1890 - 1972) Jan Matulka was born in 1890 in a small town 85 miles southwest of Prague, in what later became Czechoslovakia. In 1905 he took his first art classes in Prague, and two years later his family emigrated to the United States settling in the Bronx, New York.

He then began taking classes at the National Academy of Design continuing there through 1917. After he finished his training, he moved into a studio apartment in Manhattan and met Lida Jirouskova, whom he married in 1918. Throughout this time he traveled quite extensively visiting the southwest United States, Czechoslovakia, Paris and Prague. In 1926, Katherine Dreier arranged his first important one-man exhibition at The Art Center, 65 East 56th Street in New York. However their relationship soon began to sour due to Matulka's acts of ingratitude and disagreements they began to have. In 1931, Stuart Davis arranged a showing of his own work at the Art Students League along with the work of Matulka, John Graham and Arshile Gorky, which began a professional friendship between the four. Ultimately Matulka's position at the League was eliminated in part because of opposition from conservative faculty members.

In 1933, he made his final visit to Europe and gave up his Paris studio to Josef Sima. In 1935 he joined the Federal Art Project (FAP) under the WPA where he created the mural Synthesis of American Music and History. In 1944 he had a solo exhibition at the A.C.A. Gallery and after that time dropped off the artistic map but still kept working until his death in 1972. In 1969 his name was mentioned in the retrospective catalog for David Smith as his biggest influence, and Matulka’s work began to sell. In 1970 New York dealer Robert Schoelkopf began representing Matulka and gave him a solo exhibition. In 1979 a retrospective of Matulka’s work opened at the Whitney Museum of Art, and in 1982 an exhibition of works donated by Lida Matulka was organized at the Guggenheim museum in New York. In 1995 a one-person exhibition was organized by the McCormick Gallery from 2004-2006 The Global Modernist exhibition traveled to six venues.

House with Stone Wall, c. 1925
15 x 20 inches
watercolor & conte crayon on paper
signed at lower right, estate stamped verso
#5172

House with Stone Wall, c. 1925
watercolor & conte crayon on paper
15 x 20 inches
signed at lower right, estate stamped verso
#5172

Paris - Bridge and Boats, c. 1923
watercolor on paper
19 x 12 1/2 inches
signed at lower right
#7467

Buildings and Watertower in the Bronx, early 1920s
oil on canvas
25 1/2 x 30 inches
estate stamped verso
#696

A View in the Bronx, c.1917
watercolor on paper
8 1/2 x 11 inches
signed at lower left, estate stamped verso
#2155

Fishermen - Gloucester, 1929
watercolor and pencil on paper
20 x 29 1/4 inches
signed lower right, estate stamped verso
#4556