Background
Šíma was born in Czech Republic on March 18, 1891.
1929
Paris, France
Josef Šíma in his studio in Paris.
172/ 170 22, U Akademie 172/4, 170 00 Prague, Czech Republic
Josef Šíma was a student of Jan Preisler at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.
Šíma was born in Czech Republic on March 18, 1891.
Josef Šíma studied under the guidance of Jan Preisler at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.
Šíma moved to Paris in 1921. There he got acquainted with the painters Amédée Ozenfant and Albert Gleizes at the magazine L’Esprit Nouveau and also became friends with Tristan Tzara and his fellow František Kupka. Josef Šíma soon joined Surrealist circles in art and literature in Paris, and displayed his works in the Surrealist section of the Salon des Surindépendants.
The artist's sources of inspiration spanned from sensual experience, through civil themes, geometric abstraction, imaginative seeking of archetypes of nature, things and human existence pictured as crystals, cosmic egg and female torsos to fascination by landscapes and mythology. Eventually, he integrated all these elements and made a synthesis of them in cosmic visions and symbols of human destiny.
Around 1926 he met Max Ernst and André Breton. Preferring not to be associated with André Breton’s Surrealist group, Josef Šíma, in collaboration with the poets and writers Roger Gilbert-Lecomte and René Daumal, formed the parallel group Le Grand Jeu. The member of the group gathered at his studio. In addition, he became the artistic director of the short-lived literary review of the same name, journal Le Grand Jeu, in 1929. Notwithstanding, Šíma participated in the Surrealist exhibition at the Kunsthaus in Zürich in 1929, and accompanied Breton and Paul Eluard on their trip to Prague in 1935. Concurrently, he also designed the cover for the Czech edition of André Breton’s iconic Surrealist novel Nadja.
After World War II, Šíma renewed his interest in painting landscapes. He presented his paintings at documenta 2 in 1959. His artworks were exhibited widely in France and abroad, leading to a major exhibition at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1968. Josef Šíma also created plenty of book illustrations, notably for works by the poet and novelist Pierre Jouve, as well as some designs for stained glass windows, for example, in The Church of St Jacques in Reims. In 1992 a show devoted to Le Grand Jeu was held at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, which also served as a retrospective exhibit of Šíma’s oeuvre.
Mer
Krajina II
Storm at Fecamp
Labyrinthe
Paysage
Crystal
Untitled
Drops of light
Orphée
Evropa
Untitled
Untitled
Maisons à la campagne II
Portrait of Vítězslav Nezval
Métamorphose IV
Composition
Corps d'azur en forme de ciel
Paysage bleu gris horizontal
A Pool
Labyrinthe
Hot Air Balloon
Untitled
Lieu
Composition
Les ombres
Vejce
Composition
Paysage
Paysage de Brie
Paysage II
Paysage surréaliste
Composition
Portrét Zuzky Zgurišky
Josef Šíma was a member of the avant-garde Devětsil artist’s group from 1920 to 1921.
Šíma took French citizenship in 1926.
Quotes from others about the person
Meyer Schapiro: "Sima is one of those painters, uncommon in our culture, who see the mysteriously grand, the cosmic. He discovers it not in the multiplicity or fullness of things, but in a few elements of narrow span, often a single chord. They shape a sparse silent world congenial to a mood of revery and invite a solitary communion with the distant and high. His reticent image calls one away from the habitual in our surroundings to a vast unlocalized space, without footholds or landmarks, beyond the reach of our hands. However strange this space may be, it is no domain of the fanciful and incongruous, but a transmuted reflection of nature. From an older more realistic art Sima has inherited an aesthetic of the airy and luminous and disengaged it from the ties with earthly objects and weather... I do not know of another painter who has maintained with such purity and steadfastness this contemplative attitude which is more familiar through the poets than the painters."