Marta Zechová↓

About the work

The oeuvre of Marta Zechová abounds in winter motifs. Landscape under the blanket of snow well suits her painting style, which is almost watercolor-light and translucent and, on the other side, visually rich. She simplifies and abstracts the reality in her paintings, but at the same time strives to evoke a particular atmosphere or action. Winter – the world of skiers, mountains, and mountain chalets – is thus also the subject of her diploma series. The general principle of her work is departing from authentic experiences. She depicts the milieu of old mountain chalets in the Bohemian Forest (known in Czech as Šumava) and the Giant Mountains (Krkonoše) with their specific air, the burning fireplace serving to dry soaked clothes, and the wooden paneling decorated with old photographs. She sometimes employs them as a basis for her works; however, there is no retro-nostalgia at play but, instead, a certain timelessness inherent to those places. Her canvases thus quite naturally contain both historical and contemporary realia, but the style deprived of details always takes over the time aspect. The real subject of the paintings is therefore translating specific fleeting situations which can today be identical to those occurring decades ago.