Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/360
place to more subtle gradations and there is no grouping whatsoever, no striving after effect. It is a piece of pure realism presented in Úprka’s impressionistic method. There is no evidence that the artist’s interest in color and light has declined. We find here the same picturesque costumes, their colors almost strongly accentuated, and the whole picture, considering that it is an interior scene, is remarkably light.
In the long row of his pictures Úprka has captured all the moods of Slovakia. His subjects include dances, marriage-feasts, children’s games, funerals, pilgrimages, processions, beggars, the peasant at his work and at his devotions; yet he has succeeded in raising them to a level that is higher than what is ordinarily understood by “genre”. And always we find light, and color, and life in his pictures.
As technique developed he has turned to tonal harmonies both in oils and aquarelles. He remains a master of color and his favorite treatment of it is in the flaming reds and the bright light of noon, against a background shimmering in the summer sun.
Early in his career Úprka departed from the slightly grim method of the Munich school and developed this original method. He has become a leader of a group of painters who follow his method and his regionalism. They have erected at Hodonín, the center of their activities, a “Fine Arts Gallery” and are employed in propagating this method throughout the land.
WHO MADE IT?
For the S. L. by Cecilia M. Gallik.
A colorful square in a frame. . . .
I stop and look in the corner
To find out the artist’s name:
Who made it?
Far greater than canvas art,
With heaven and earth for a background. . . . . .
I ponder the thought in my heart:
Who made it?
ODE LUNAE
For the S. L. by George A. Gallik.
Where the last of all echoes must die.
You advance in majestic resplendence
Like a Queen of a kingdom on high.
With the dust of your silvery sheen,
And it spreads out a mantle of softness—
Like a vapor translucent, serene.
With the flush of morn born anew,
You diminish and melt in the sunlight
Like a feathery fleck on the blue.
Where you glide, yea! for aeons unknown,
You have studied our earth through the ages,
And the knowledge is strictly your own.
To ascend where you hover so free,
Would you break your mysterious silence?—
Would you whisper your secret to me?—
THE EYES OF MAY
For the S. L. by Chas. J. Heitzman.
Winsome, laughing, gay,
Winsome, laughing, tender eyes
But, for all that, very wise.
Her glances seem so coy and shy
My studied caution I forget, . . .
I fear, alas, too often I
Eye the eyes of May!
Yet their ‘lurement I obey;
For Caesar had his Ides of March,
I, the eyes of May.