Alfred Justitz

Alfréd Justitz byl český malíř, grafik, ilustrátor, kynolog a představitel zakladatelské generace českého moderního malířství.

https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfr%C3%A9d_Justitz

https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000141166512016

He was a Czech painter, graphic designer, illustrator, cynologist and representative of the founding generation of Czech modern painting. He is one of the most prominent figures of Czech modernism.

Alfred Justitz was born in Nové Cerekvi near Pelh seimov in a family of doctors as one of his three sons. He experienced his first contact with painting in Jihlava, where he met the painter Roman Havelka and his work was enchanted by him. His journey to art began by studying architecture at the Czech Technical College in Prague with professor Jan Kot Kotra, then he moved to the Prague Academy with professors Pirner and Thielem. He improved his painting skills in German Karlsruhe at professor Ludwig Schmid-Reutte and in Berlin at Wilhelm Trübner. In 1910 he went to Paris, where he was enchanted by the works of Caesar, Derain, Daumiéro and other giants. In 1928, he joined SVU Mánes, exhibited with a group of Hardcore.

He was also a noted graphic designer and illustrator. For example, his illustrations decorate the novel V. Huga Temple of Notre Dame in Paris, published in 1927. Many galleries also preserve his poster work.
For his paintings he took inspiration from the South Bohemian landscape or from lost Jewish families. The painting "Jakob, Leo, Rachel and Zilpe with Little Josef" was painted on order before the Great War (influenced by Renoir). "A quality work of art does not need authorization", he claimed about the painting V. V. Stech.
Justitz created his own portrait in the last year of his studies in Prague, at the time when he was training in František Thiele, who was himself a skilled but academically focused portraitist and figurativeist. In the painting, through the undoubted influence of the teacher, a certain release of the handwriting and a strong interest in light, which revives and literally shakes the surface of an otherwise still firmly modeled, realistically perceived shape. The typical concentrated expression and in fact the whole physiognomy of the painter's face is almost no different from his later image in 1919, which for interest we also present in a mirror rollover, i.e. with a face captured as it appears in a self-portrait taken just with the help of a mirror.

He was also a prominent kynologist and an enthusiastic promoter of the boxer breed. His arrival in the boxer breeders club marked a new stage of the rise of breeding. Justitz was elected as a breeding manager and entrusted with management of the breed books.

He was also an active freemason, a member of the Sibi et Posteris lodge in Prague. The tombstone at the cemetery in Nové Cerekvo was dedicated to his bed and bears Masonic symbolism. After his death, the lodge tried to provide materially for his wife Anna Justitz, who died soon after him.

Alfred Justitz died in February 1934 after almost a year of illness in Bratislava. The last farewell was held in Brno. His ashes are placed today in an urn grave at the Jewish cemetery in his native Nové Cerekva, where the ashes of his wife Anna Justiczová, who suffered loneliness and a year after her husband chose voluntary death.