La Somnambule

Styrsky painted Sleepwalker in 1925, in his mid-twenties, part of the restless young avant-garde in Prague that had grown up in the new Czechoslovak state after the First World War. With his lifelong partner, the painter Toyen, he was working toward a style the two would soon name artificialism, pictures that let go of recognizable subjects for floating fields of soft colour and drifting shapes. You can see it starting here. The title points to a figure, but what you get is a tall, narrow panel of muted tones and vague forms, more mood than scene. The Moravian Gallery in Brno bought the canvas in 1965.