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Signed and dated ‘Zrzavý 47’ (lower right); signed, titled and dated ‘Jan Zrzavý / Městečko / tempera 1947’ (on the reverse).
Sizes:
Frame: 43 × 51 cm | 16.9 × 20.1 in
Artwork: 27 × 35 cm | 10.6 × 13.8 in
White houses with roofs of red, blue and violet gather around a church with a pointed red spire; a road winds up through green grass scratched into the paint stroke by stroke, and the sky is a field of blue dots. ‘Městečko’ — the little town — is a distilled, almost toy-like vision of a Czech village, painted in tempera in 1947 by Jan Zrzavý, one of the founding figures of Czech modern art.
Zrzavý (1890–1977) belonged to the generation of the Osma and Tvrdošíjní groups, but his art stands apart: a dreamlike, simplified world in which houses, trees and hills are reduced to their essential shapes and lit by an inner light. From the 1930s he painted the Bohemian-Moravian highlands around Okrouhlice and Krucemburk, and small towns like this one became a favourite theme. The sgraffito grass and the dotted sky are hallmarks of his tempera technique.
The work is signed and dated ’47’ on the front and inscribed with the title, medium and date on the reverse.
Very good condition: the paint layer — the dotted sky, the stippled white walls and the scratched (sgraffito) grass — complete and undamaged, with no retouching in normal or ultraviolet light; light rubbing at the extreme edges under the frame rebate, a faint impressed mark in the grass at the far left and a loose surface fibre. The reverse is clean and carries the artist’s pencil inscription. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report.
This lot is catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification and is covered by our Five-Year Authenticity Guarantee under Section 4 of the Conditions of Sale. The guarantee concerns authorship; it does not extend to provenance, dating, condition or value, which are described to the best of our knowledge.
Buyers should review the catalogue carefully and raise any questions before bidding; additional information is not ordinarily provided after the auction.
Five years on authorship for works catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification (Section 4 of our Conditions of Sale); headings such as “Attributed to” or “Circle of” are sold as described.
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The estimate of €20,000–€30,000 is our opinion of the range this work should reach; the starting price of €10,000 is the lowest bid we accept. We have not published comparable results for this lot; ask us before the sale and we will send the results we based the estimate on.
Bidding on this site, the buyer’s premium is 25%, Spanish IVA included, and there is no VAT on the hammer price and no card fee: at the starting price of €10,000 the total is €12,500; at the low estimate of €20,000 the total is €25,000; at the high estimate of €30,000 the total is €37,500.
Through LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, Drouot or Bidspirit the premium is 30%, so the same hammer of €30,000 costs €39,000 there. Shipping and insurance are quoted separately; the estimator on this page gives the figure for your country. Buyers outside the EU pay no Spanish tax on the lot; the destination’s import rules apply (United States: original paintings and drawings enter duty-free; United Kingdom: 5% import VAT on art). Card payments are accepted up to €10,000; larger amounts by bank transfer.
Yes. This lot is catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification, so it carries our Five-Year Authenticity Guarantee under Section 4 of the Conditions of Sale: if the authorship proves materially incorrect, you may return the work within five years for a refund of the purchase price. The guarantee concerns authorship; provenance, dating, condition and value are described to the best of our knowledge and are not guaranteed.
A condition report with ultraviolet photographs is prepared on request, normally within two working days; the condition summary on this page is examined in-house and is not a conservator’s report. Further photographs of any detail, the reverse or the frame are sent on request. The work can be examined in our Barcelona showroom by appointment before the sale, and you are welcome to send your own conservator or specialist.
Jan Zrzavý was born in 1890 in Okrouhlice, in the Bohemian-Moravian highlands, the son of a village schoolmaster. Largely self-taught after a brief spell at the Prague School of Applied Arts, he found his direction early: by 1910 he had joined the artists’ group Sursum and was painting the visionary, simplified pictures — ‘Cleopatra’, ‘Vale of Sorrow’ — that made him, with Kubišta and Filla, one of the founders of Czech modern art.
Zrzavý absorbed Cubism and the Italian primitives, Leonardo and Giotto, and fused them into a personal language of pure, rounded forms and luminous colour. He was a member of the Tvrdošíjní (‘The Stubborn Ones’) group after the First World War and later of the Mánes Union of Fine Arts.
From the 1920s he divided his time between Prague, Brittany — whose boats and coast he painted for decades — and Venice, and after 1935 the highland villages of Krucemburk and Okrouhlice, which became the setting for his ‘little towns’ and ‘Bohemian-Moravian’ landscapes: white houses, red church spires, scratched fields of grass under dotted skies.
Named National Artist in 1966, Zrzavý is represented in the National Gallery in Prague, which devoted a major retrospective to him in 2015, and in Czech regional museums; a permanent exhibition of his work is at Krucemburk, where he is buried. He died in Prague in 1977.
Jan Zrzavý (1890–1977), founder of Czech modern art: his highland little towns, Breton boats and luminous tempera technique, and the signed 1947 Městečko offered at Aurora & Athena.
Highlights of the Aurora & Athena autumn sale on 17 October 2026: Bridget Tichenor, Nicholas Roerich, Konstantin Korovin, Gerard Sekoto, Jan Zrzavý, Pan Yuliang, a Miró lithograph and the painters of the École de Paris.
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