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From 1909 to 1914, Šíma studied in Prague, spending the first year at the School of Arts and Crafts [Vysoká škola umělecko-průmyslová v Praze] and then transferring to the Academy of Fine Arts [Akademie výtvarných umění v Praze]. At his father's request, he then expanded his education by studying civil engineering. He himself was interested in mathematics and geometry. After his return from the battlefields of the First World War in Galicia, he settled in Brno, where he became involved in the local artistic scene. He was also one of the founding members of the Czech avant-garde artists' association Devětsil (1920), with whose members from literary circles he had a long-standing friendship.
In 1920 Šíma went to France. His love of poetry led him to book illustration, which became his main source of income in Paris. He remained in France for the rest of his life, although he did not break off contact with the Czech cultural sphere – he often visited friends, exhibited his works, and wrote articles for Czech cultural magazines.
Around 1925, under the influence of Piet Mondrian, Šíma tried his hand at non-representational abstract art. However, his painting style changed dramatically in the second half of the 1920s, when he met the French writer and devotee of Sigmund Freud, Pierre Jean Jouve. He was also greatly influenced by the poetic treatises of his colleague and friend from the Devětsil group, Karel Teige. He was interested in the subconscious, in archetypes and myths, and was fascinated by Eastern philosophy.
In 1926, Šíma was granted French citizenship. A year later he collaborated with young poets in founding the group Le Grand Jeu [The Great Game] (1927-1932) in Paris. Its members aspired to a radical transformation of seeing, perceiving, and thinking, encouraging the exploration of new, borderline states of consciousness, and seeking to awaken the primeval, hidden capacities of the psyche, from extrasensory perception to states of clairvoyance and the transmission of consciousness. Their motto was "to turn everything and every moment into a question. Question everything, reject everything, and at the same time accept everything".
At that time, he also began to paint his first imaginative pictures, in which he used such symbols as the egg, the crystal, the obelisk, and the tree. He transformed his inner world – his childhood memories, dreams, and experiences, such as the fleeting phenomenon of a ball lightning event – into an original artistic form on the boundary between Surrealism and Poetism.
After 1948, Šíma's relations with his homeland were severed by the Iron Curtain. From 1963 until his death, he worked on stained glass window designs for the church of St James (Eglise Saint-Jacques) in Reims. Josef Šíma, who is sometimes referred to as a poet among
painters, is today regarded throughout the world as one of the great representatives of Classical Modernism.
In this exhibition, the symbolist landscapes of Josef Šíma enter into dialogue with the similarly luminous, large-format watercolour abstractions by Lukáš Karbus. Also, the world of Šíma's imaginative landscapes with their high horizon seems to have experienced a rebirth in some of Daniel Pitín's paintings.
LANDSCAPE WITH TRIANGLE (OBELISK), 1930
LANDSCAPE, 1931
b. 1891 in Jaroměř, Kingdom of Bohemia
d. 1971 in Paris