Expulsion

The painter, photographer, musician, and theatre person Petr Nikl was a member of the group of artists titled Tvrdohlaví (The Stubborn) at the end of the 1990s. Already at that time his work oscillated freely among all kinds of forms and genres. The painting The Expulsion is a typical example of postmodern citation of earlier art, in this case the famous fresco of the Italian Renaissance painter Masaccio in the chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine Church in Florence. Nikl used the fresco’s main motif of Adam and Eve which merges into the painting’s background. The figure of an angel is missing. Instead, strange yellow stigmas resembling torn-off heads of stuffed toys appear on the bodies of the two figures.