JUSTITZ, ALFRED

JUSTITZ, ALFRED (1879–1934), Czech painter and graphic artist. Justitz was born in Novā Cerekev and studied first architecture and then painting at the Academy in Prague and, from 1905, in Karlsruhe and Berlin. In 1910 he settled temporarily in Paris, where he was greatly influenced by impressionist theories of form, retaining at the same time, however, his decorative lyricism. After serving in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, he returned to Prague and became one of the founders of modern Czechoslovak art. In 1920 and 1921 he participated in the exhibitions of the most important avant-garde group of that time in Prague, which called itself "Tvrdošijní" ("The Stubborn Ones"). He was again in Berlin and Paris in 1922 and 1923, but in 1924 he returned to Prague, where he spent the rest of his life. His best paintings – Men in Landscape (1914), Head of a Dancer (1922), Road between Barns (1924), and Three Men (1926) – are in the Prague National Gallery. (Avigdor Dagan)