CGD

In his book Nožička a Wohryzek, contemporary Czech novelist Marek Toman returns to the 1920s. He chooses the genre of the slightly decadent detective story, which allows him to weave into the story both a tribute to his favourite literary characters of the time and to the readership, as well as the phenomenon of “trampism”, the themes of emancipation, emigration, business ethics, and the developing cultural metropolis of the 1920s. Toman enjoys this particular literary genre because it allows him to move freely through the territory of the 1920s, and while not lecturing, he can teach readers how to read the essential themes. Jan Trakal approached this illustrator's challenge in a twofold way: he wanted to really sweep the reader away with the atmosphere of Prague of the time and the legendary tramp corners, to guide the reader through the story, to tell so much that the reader could fall for the book. At the same time, he guides the reader through the period visuals, characterized by, among other things, genre confusion, fragments of advertisements, comics, fonts, etc... For his illustrations, Trakal chose the technique of chiaroscuro charcoal (first drawing with charcoal and then erasing the resulting shape to an almost plastic form), accompanied by a monolinear comic comics narrative. He has gathered his illustrations in one sketchbook, which he has literally filled to the brim. Viewing his illustrations evokes an almost cinematic experience. The words from his thesis evaluation report still apply to these illustrations: he returns to a time when beautiful illustrations adorned etiquettes and embroideries, blended with the soft shapes of hand-painted scripts and the irregular shapes of wooden grotesques. Unobtrusive and simple beauty, as Josef Čapek calls it in his essay on The Humblest Art, is closer to Jan Trakal than gallery art or industrially churned-out junk. After all, his inspiration is the same as that of the first generation of modernists: Japanese prints, children's drawings and hand-painted signboards. The result, however, as in his work with recycled textiles of his local craftsman clothing brand Alois Ficek, is not a musty vintage; he provides the readers with the feeling of finally seeing what they longed for when they read adventure literature and illustrations somehow passed them by... Trakal’s illustrations are neither zen-like nor pretentious; his focus, style, passion for technique, and humour, rooted in the best of the 1920s and 1930s, are more reminiscent of the work of emblematic figures of contemporary French and German illustration.

Tereza Horváthová