Washer Woman - Illustration for the book of poems Panenky (Dolls) by Jaroslav Durych

Josef Šíma drew the illustrations for Panenky (Dolls), a book of poems by Jaroslav Durych, in 1927. He produced the drawings for the Aventinum publishing house operated by Otakar Štorch-Marien and these were published at Christmas that same year in a special book edition, whose graphic layout was the work of Karel Dyrynk. Šíma’s creative perceptiveness of that period found expression in his sensitive drawings and corresponds with the refined eroticism of Durych’s collection of poems. Each poem was thus accompanied by a distinctive image of its own yet the drawings preserved their indepence of the original text. Šíma often used a lead pencil to render drawings with delicately textured surfaces; the treatment of the drawings has a similar basis as the Surrealist frottage technique practiced by Max Ernst, with which Šíma was acquainted. Faces-masks and levitating bodies together with flowers as symbols of innocence are typical motifs of his illustrative drawings of the 1920s and ’30s. At the time, Josef Šíma lived and worked in France and that same year he co-founded the group Le Grand Jeu (High Stakes) with his French poet friends.