Line no. 56 (Humberto)

The Fifty-sixth Line (in this simple way the artist has been naming his paintings since 1974) takes an important place in Sýkora´s work baceuse of its vigorous colour scheme. The first pictures on this theme were painted in 1973, when the preceding and no less exciting stage of his work was closed - the ten-year-long period of structures. As early as 1964, Zdeněk Sýkora, probably the first painter in the history of art, made use of the computer as an auxiliary tool in the solution of the composition of the picture. The programme for determining the position of each element in the structure was devised jointly with the mathematician Jaroslav Blažek. The structures were subject to strict, predetermined rules, the computer kept the rules and solved the assignment. On the other hand the "earthworms" - as the artist sometimes called his line pictures - are based on the application of chance in the system evolved by the artist. In 1985 his wife Lenka began to cooperate on its development. Thus each picture at firts existed as a numerical score, which was then transferred in classical way, by paint, on the canvas, as if a composition was created from the music notes. And why did the painter give the picture another name? He says that he himself was suprised by the way in which the "crazy" picure reminiscent of a circus had originated. The painting thus went beyond his expectations in all respects, he even had to get accustomed to the strange combinations of colours so that for one year Humberto was stored in the next room. In the end, it became a favourite representative of Sýkora´s art.