Surrealist still-life with violin and plaster hand

Born in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) on a dairy farm, Matulka attended art school as a teenager in Prague for two years before moving to the United States and settling in the Bronx with his family. In the 1930s, he worked for the Federal Art Project, creating murals at the Williamsburg Federal Housing Project in Brooklyn. In his paintings of the early 1930s, like this one, he paid homage to art historical tradition.