Alen Divis ( 1900 – 1956) was a Czech painter known for his melancholic art. Having spent much of his life abroad, often working in solitude, he remained rather unknown during his life but has had a postmortem revival in the art world.
In 1947, after the end of the Second War and the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Diviš returned to his native country, more than two decades after he had first left for Paris. Upon his return, he achieved a brief period of success. His written memoirs of Santé were published in a weekly paper, and in February 1948, his recent work was exhibited in Prague. The same month, however, brought the Communist coup d'état which would marginalize artists of his type out of work. He spent the rest of the decade producing illustrations for Karel Jaromír Erben's mid-19th century collection of ballads
"He became a sort of mythological figure in Czech modern art. He was known as an artist that was forgotten and then sort of miraculously rediscovered. He was someone who was very secretive, whose art was very dark. He was more a figure coming from a romantic literature than from life..."
