Night Pedestrian

In the first half of the 1940s, František Hudeček paid focused attention to the Night Pedestrian theme, projecting into it the essential feeling of his own existence. He expressed „a sense of alienation in the milieu of the life of an anonymous human community, as well as an awareness of Man’s close attachment to the city - that new pulsating organism“. He evoked the meditative or ecstatic experiences from his nocturnal wanderings about Prague during which he perceived himself as a part of the Universe. The print portrays a crystalline figure emanating rays of energy into the surrounding environment. The arrangement of the composition into hatched forms gives the impression of a field of force extending beyond the scene’s boundaries. This creates a dematerialized vision hovering on the verge of abstraction. In Night Pedestrian, Hudeček combined a real event, a poetic idea, a dream and geometric order into a unique whole.