Josef Treuchel: Geology / Tree of Life - University Museum VSB-TUO

Name: Geology / Tree of Life

Author: Josef Treuchel

Dating: 1986–1987

Location: in the interior on the first floor of the Geological Pavilion of Prof. František Pošepný on the VŠB-TUO campus

Execution: a glass mosaic of chipped glass enamel measuring 200 x 600 cm

TREE OF LIFE AS GEOLOGICAL PHENOMENON

Geological Pavilion of Prof. František Pošepný in Ostrava-Poruba gathers and keeps mineralogical, petrographic, paleontological and regional geological collections, which serve for teaching, research and popularization purposes. Although it had been referred to as a “geological documentation warehouse” in documents from the time of its construction, it is essentially an exhibition building, where minerals and rocks are the museum exhibits. This special gallery was supposed to be decorated by a work of art.

The visual design of the building from 1985, drawn by architect Vladimír Svoboda, intended a popular, although a variously construed theme at that time, the Tree of Life. Under this title, the artists presented many different ideas. One artist created a stylized tree with its fruit, another one associated the theme with the motif of the family, the third understood the assignment as an environmental issue, and yet another one remembered the biblical tree of life that referred to sin and redemption. None of these concepts, however, quite fit in the geological pavilion. Thus, when the Kopřivnice-based painter, the already Meritorious Artist Josef Treuchel, who had won the contract, prepared one of the five designs submitted to the artistic committee and presented an image of a family with a tree in the background and prevailing shades of green associated with the spring, he could not possibly succeed. By coincidence, this design has been preserved, and it is interesting to compare it with “option no. 3”, which was finally selected and realized. It illustrated the evolution of life from the aspect of the geological formation of our planet.

Here, Treuchel omitted the figurative motif and adapted the tree in the centre of the mosaic more to a volcano with lava flowing from the depths of the earth forming its surface. He tuned the mosaic to bright red colour with contrasting bright yellow (especially the large sun on the left, perhaps the only direct link between the two known designs) and dark blue (the cooled lava). The expressivity is typical for Treuchel, and one suspects the influence of the Czech painter Jan Bauch and the Dutchman Vincent van Gogh. Compared to the moderate “family” design, the selected option no. 3, which we could undoubtedly call Geology, appears more true-to-life and more convincing. Moreover, it is also a better fit in Treuchel’s work as a whole, which is characteristic by emotional, almost symbolically experienced stylization of reality. Besides more traditional themes such as the landscape of the Beskydy Mountains area or of boats in harbours, he also painted industrial Ostrava and its emerging mines as well as bleak, dark corners of shafts and coking plants telling the mysterious story of the birth of coal. In this point, Treuchel’s painting work converges with the mosaic made for VŠB-TUO. The high-quality realization of its design was greatly helped by the use of chipped glass enamel, the most costly and the most impressive technique that allows for the use of a broad range of colour shades. As said by the ancient Romans, who were also big fans of mosaic art: “Finis coronat opus”.

General view of the mosaic, photo by Roman Polášek

Mosaic Tree of Life with original furniture, photo by Roman Polášek

Signature in the lower right corner of the mosaic, photo by Roman Polášek

One of the alternative mosaic designs submitted to the selection committee, 1986, Jakub Ivánek’s archive

Josef Treuchel

(1925–1990)

Work: Geology / Tree of Life

Josef Treuchel first completed his apprenticeship as a machine fitter and worked at the Tatra plant in Kopřivnice. There he started attending an art club run under a Factory Club of Revolutionary Union Movement, where he met the painter Helena Salichová, who brought him to the artistic creation. In the years 1952–1959, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under supervision of the landscape painter Otakar Nejedlý, later on under Antonín Pelc and Vlastimil Rada. In 1959 he became a member of the Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists. Treuchel spent most of his life in Kopřivnice, the nearer and wider surroundings of which he often portrayed in his landscape paintings. The second characteristic feature of Treuchel‘s paintings is the sea harbours with boats that he had seen on his travels across Europe. Since the 1970s, he had also intensively depicted the industrial landscape of Ostrava. He has formally switched from realism to expressive and emotional capture of reality. His landscapes (such as the Hollow Way, Spring) or raw industrial scenes (such as the 1. května Coking Plant, a cycle the Birth and Mining of the Coal) often bear a symbolic dimension. For architecture, Josef Treuchel created mainly art-protis (his last art-protis work was the one for the Beskydy Theatre in Nový Jičín, 1990), but he is also the author of designs of two glass mosaics. He was a member of the Union of Czech Fine Artists and in 1983 he was awarded the award and title of a Meritorious Artist.