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The landscapes Machotka painted in Central Italy capture one of the principal characteristics of the Umbrian and Tuscan countryside, that unmistakable geometry of signs formed by the harmonious relation between human intervention (vineyards, ploughed fields, etc.) and a nature free to express herself with the enveloping force of its woods, rivers and, not least, its inner light. It's worth insisting again on the wonderful luminosity of the landscapes of this Czecho-American painter: in the--if I may say--less Cèzannian paintings, the artist succeeds in catching the magic of the hour, that same enchantment which, in front of real landscapes enlivened by a particular sparkle or a deep and dense contrejour, forces us to say that this fragment of nature couldn't appear to us in a better light.

However, there is no doubt that it was precisely the awareness of the strong debt toward Cèzanne--freely acquired, of course, but in many ways constricting--that in the 'nineties pushed Machotka, who had also experimented with the Cèzannian theme of the still life, to take on another challenge, that of the female nude.

These nudes by Pavel Machotka reduce the spectator to silence, to asking the question (which may have no answer) that corresponds to the mystery which, in the end, informs all our existence: we live enjoying the beauty of what surrounds us (of which the feminine body, and of course the masculine one, is one of its principal expressions) but deep down we cannot understand the ultimate meaning of that beauty, of its enchantment, and of its (and our) inevitable transience. Perhaps the deep structure sought for by Machotka through the faceless nudes (and by extension through all the other more direct and explicit nude paintings) corresponds closely to our inability to let go of the very ancient enigma of Love and Death joined together in an inexplicable embrace.