- Etat: circulated R envelope
- Année: 2013-11-27
Bohuslav Reynek: Still life with the author, 1955; the Fine Art Gallery in Havlíčkův Brod
Bohuslav Reynek was born on 31 May 1892 in Petrkov nearby Havlíčkův Brod and he died there on 28 September 1971. He was a renowned Czech poet, translator and graphic artist.
During his studies, under the influence of his professor Max Eisler, he became interested in literature and fine arts. After graduating from secondary school, he followed his father's wishes and began his studies in agriculture but, after some time, he dropped out and returned to his family house in Petrkov. He then took his first trip to France and started to write his first poems, later published in the collection “Žízně”.
In 1923, he left for Grenoble to meet the poet and author of “Ta vie est là…”, Suzanne Renaud, whom he married in 1926. He spent the next ten years with his sons Daniel and Jiří, splitting his time between Grenoble and Petrkov. After his father's death, he came back to Petrkov to stay and manage the family farm.
In 1944, at the end of the war, the family was to leave the farm. One year later, they returned but the farm was nationalised after the communist coup in 1948. The family remained. Reynek worked on the nationalised farm as a worker until 1957. These hard times created an introverted, mature Reynek with a unique poetic and graphic expression; he used a combination of dry needles with monotypes to express his deeply felt emotions.
For many years, Reynek's poems were only published in special limited editions or magazines. He had to wait until 1969 to have his first collection published. His first collections, written in the 1920s, were influenced by expressionism. After a ten-year break, his style changed, focusing more on the region of his birth, the Czech and Moravian Highlands, and its natural world. The themes of Christian spirituality and his love of God grew through his poems. The culmination of his work was his last collection “Odlet vlaštovek”, published after his death.
Translations made up a major part of Reynek's work. He translated mainly from French, but also from German. Since the late 1940s, he concentrated on translating collections of his wife Suzanne Renaud's poems.
As a young man, he became involved in graphic art. He also collaborated with other graphic artists such as Josef Čapek. His works exhibited during his stay in France were very well received. Landscapes were the dominant theme of his 1930s works. Biblical motifs grew through his works after 1939. Crucifixion, pieta and St. Peter's denial of Christ were the most frequent ones used by him during World War II. The most significant part of Reynek's graphic works, such as the series “Job”, “Don Quijote”, was created in the 1950s and 1960s.
Like his poetry, his graphic art had to wait for its full official recognition until the fall of the communist regime in the 1990s.
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