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Drypoint on paper. Signed lower center: “Tichy 44”. The head of a figure from the classic Italian Commedia dell’arte, his shoulders wrapped in a checkered shirt and a tall hat atop his head, the harlequin (arlecchino) inspires artists to this day. A poor farmer who came down from the hills of Bergamo, the heavily patched clothing he wore gradually turned into his checkered clothing. In France his attire was stylized for the court; instead of patches, he started to wear multicolored checkered clothes. The first works with this subject stem from the early 1920s. Ref.: Dvorák F., Frantisek Tichy – Grafické dilo, Galerie a nakladatelstvi Vltavin, Praha 1995, p. 85.