EMIL FILLA IN THE 94TH AUCTION OF KODL GALLERY
The forthcoming 94th auction of KODL Gallery, to be held on 30 November 2025, will present two exceptional works by Emil Filla – The Reader and The Samovar. Both paintings are significant testimonies to Filla’s lifelong quest for painterly form and his crucial contribution to the development of Czech modern art.
The Reader, created in 1930, belongs to a period when Emil Filla was developing a more intimate, lyrical dimension in his work. In this composition, the artist masterfully fuses a delicately stylised female figure with a geometrically constructed space, creating a harmonious whole based on the balance between inner concentration and external formal order. The woman’s body seems to grow almost organically into the structure of the chair, achieving a near-symbolic union between figure and environment. Characterised by soft pastel colouring and compositional balance, the painting stands as one of the highlights of Filla’s interwar oeuvre. The artist included it in his Jubilee Exhibition of the Work of Emil Filla (Mánes Association of Fine Artists, Prague, May 1932, cat. no. 157), which was later shown in Brno under the title Emil Filla. Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings organised by the Group of Fine Artists in the House of Arts, Brno (October 1932, cat. no. 55).
In contrast, The Samovar from 1913 ranks among Filla’s most striking early Cubist compositions. The work was created at a time when the artist was deeply inspired by the Parisian avant-garde and experimenting with material and pictorial structure. The combination of oil, enamel, and sand on canvas reveals Filla’s innovative approach to technique and his ambition to transcend the boundaries of traditional painting practice. In 1913, Parisian Cubists – among them Pablo Picasso – began using Ripolin enamel paints, which enabled new effects of light and materiality. Filla encountered this technology during his repeated stays in Paris, where he planned to settle permanently. He visited the city several times, and together with his wife Hana spent their honeymoon there – an experience that deepened his engagement with modern European art.
Within the context of Filla’s oeuvre, The Samovar occupies an important chronological position. Painted in 1913, it belongs to the period when the artist forged a close relationship with the key movements of the European avant-garde and entered a phase in which Cubism became for him not merely a style, but a statement about space, construction, and matter. The painting also stands as rare evidence of Filla’s search for a personal interpretation of Cubism, already showing elements of abstraction and a concern with the purely visual qualities of the painting – its texture, structure, and material weight.
The inclusion of both works in the auction highlights Filla’s fundamental role in shaping the language of modern art and offers the public an opportunity to rediscover his oeuvre in the broader context of European artistic developments in the first half of the 20th century.
Pre-auction exhibition: 3 – 29 November 2025
KODL Gallery | Národní 7, Prague
