Lot 212

Zdeněk Beran (1937 - 2014) TORSO OF THE PAINTING I (IN THE GRAY FIELD)

Zdeněk Beran’s painting straddled the line between pure abstraction and photographically captured reality. Even during his studies, he was a member of the Konfrontace group, which was already creating Informel works as early as 1960. Zdeněk Beran’s work combines environmental art, structural abstraction, and masterful painterly technique. The power of the perfect illusion of hyperrealism reinforces elements of reality, poses existential questions, and often represents an artistic “shock therapy.” The tension between the construction of space and the destruction of matter, details magnified many times over, and the contrasts of hope and despair within illusory dimensions are correlated in Zdeněk Beran’s work with conceptual approaches within his installations.

Exhibited: Violence+, Villa Pellé, Jan. 28–March 22, 2026. Reproduced in: Zdeněk Beran, 2007. National Gallery, pp. 306–307.