OLDŘICH KULHÁNEK. drawings and prints

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1 OLDŘICH KULHÁNEK drawings and prints

In the recent drawings and lithographs of Oldřich Kulhánek, expression, gesture and movement are used to communicate the intricacy of life, human values and the rise and fall of mankind.

2 In the recent drawings and lithographs of Oldřich Kulhánek, expression, gesture and movement are used to communicate the intricacy of life, human values and the rise and fall of mankind. The strong narrative character of these images captivates the viewer, yet it is beyond tangible description. Kulhánek is as good a psychologist as he is a keen observer of form, but he is above all a highly skilled artist, and a master of technique. His three most recent lithographs ( Job Triptych ), in which the horizons of expression are at their broadest, are imposing works of art where he is truly able to demonstrate his skills as a natural figuralist. In them, the body fills the entire picture plane, proving once more that Kulhánek is not only a graphic artist but he is also an artist of the monumental. The male nude in these lithographs expresses a physical world imbued with spirit, as is conveyed in his faces in which one can identify the whole panoply of human psychology. In his human figures, Kulhánek decries behold man! The last image of the Job Triptych is an exemplary work of this artist; it is a print of the highest quality, and artistic achievement. Given the strength of his imagination, it would seem that this latest image is creatively pregnant, and he is preparing for further compositions. Kulhánek has an artistic legacy of over forty years; and he has been systematically focused on his creative process and has unflinchingly followed his personal trajectory, which has yielded a remarkable culmination of work. On a number of occasions, however, he had to swallow a bitter pill, and he might well have to do so again in the future, since he has never and will never avoid the risks of the world around him. Yet his works reflect an inner sense of self-assurance as well as a precision of form. The comment which Robert-Grillet once made about Franz Kafka is wholly applicable to Oldřich Kulhánek: there is nothing more fantastic than precision. Despite this praise, Kulhánek is sceptical towards his international renown, saying that although we have managed to keep pace and express ourselves in an appropriate way, like our fellow artists in the West, who in the world knows about it? Job No. 3 - lithograph, 2004 My opinion, my conviction, is that in his work an artist should give an account of himself, and of the time and place he inhabits. The artist should reveal the pretence (or lies) of the establishment, unmasking what is happening to man and showing how man is manipulated and dehumanized. The artist should present an account of the soul of his contemporary. Someone does know about it however, as is demonstrated by the series of exhibitions that Kulhánek has had in various countries, the invitations he has received, the prizes he has won, the commendations he has earned, and the fact that he is represented in some of the most prestigious art collections in the world. There can be no doubt, that he is indeed, one of the most outstanding graphic artists of our time. Eva Petrová, PhD., art historian 3

Symmetry of Obesity - lithograph, 2003 Ecce homo No. 5 - lithograph, 1994 I am fascinated by the amazing tension between the face of an innocent baby and the face of an old person.

What about now. What will become of the theme of your graphics now that the inspiring totalitarian stupidity is gone?

3 Symmetry of Obesity - lithograph, 2003 Ecce homo No. 5 - lithograph, 1994 I am fascinated by the amazing tension between the face of an innocent baby and the face of an old person. At a single point the life circle is closed in the infantile look; at the beginning is the starting point for the search for life, at the end it is the dull abyss of the final infinity. What about now. What will become of the theme of your graphics now that the inspiring totalitarian stupidity is gone? My reply is simple I will continue my work because my life is my theme and my inspiration. What I communicate are my problems, dreams, forebodings, feelings common to a Czech, an American, or a Dutch. I draw my sarcastic humor from the never-drying well of human foolishness which recognizes no geographical borders. 4 5

Homage to Franz Kafka - drawing, 2007 I was born in Prague, in the city where the spirit of Kafka is omnipresent. I don t have to speculate on Kafka. I have lived him.

4 Homage to Franz Kafka - drawing, 2007 I was born in Prague, in the city where the spirit of Kafka is omnipresent. I don t have to speculate on Kafka. I have lived him. I have read the intellectual warmups of the Kafkaesque absurdity and fabrications, and I have known them. Imagine that you spent fifty years living in a country where such absurdity are the sole reality. Mr. K. s trial is neither fiction nor a vision of an imaginary world. His life was my life. I know what it is to be interrogated by the secret police every other week for two years. 6 7

However, to me, who expresses himself by drawing figures, the male body is much more malleable and there is

5 Parable No. 2 - lithograph, 2000 Parable No. 4 - lithograph, 2000 Granted, the female body is the most perfect shape Nature had created. However, to me, who expresses himself by drawing figures, the male body is much more malleable and there is much more drama in it. A blank sheet of paper fascinates me because it enables me to draw a line on it to create a shape, and then give substance to this shape by supplementing the details. 8 9

Oldřich Kulhánek was born on the 26 th of February 1940, in Prague. From 1958 to 1964 he studied at the Prague Academy of Applied Arts, in the studio of Professor Karel Svolinský.

6 Oldřich Kulhánek was born on the 26 th of February 1940, in Prague. From 1958 to 1964 he studied at the Prague Academy of Applied Arts, in the studio of Professor Karel Svolinský. The years of his apprenticeship there, provided the foundation and inspiration of his artistic career. In 1971 he was arrested by the StB (the Czechoslovak Secret Police) and was accused that with his prints of , he had disgraced the representatives of the communist countries (in particular his images of the face of Stalin). This Kafkaesque situation was to continue until 1972 and on the 5 th of July 1973, he was tried in court. At this farce, like in a scene out of the writer Hašek s Good Soldier Schweik, eleven of his prints were sentenced by the judge to be destroyed, i.e. burnt. However the gentlemen of the court, did no such thing, and kept the prints for themselves which was tantamount to government sanctioned theft. Kulhánek later commented I realised that one s situation in life, even if a tragic one, never lacks a touch of humour though, usually very black humour! Despite the toughness of the regime, thanks to a number of friends in the United States, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria and France, he did not lose contact with the European and world art scene, during these his darkest years. After the collapse of the communist dictatorship, in 1989, the situation in Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic changed irrevocably; artists (and the nation at large) were finally free to express themselves and travel. Following the changes he was later invited to give a series of workshops at various universities in the United States as a visiting professor (such as the University of Houston Clear Lake, Texas, the Art Center New Smyrna Beach, Florida). In addition to his art and teaching, one of his many accomplishments is that he created the designs of the new Czech Banknotes, which was a commission that came with a great deal of prestige. He has also become one of the principal designers of Czech stamps, which has included designing a stamp of the present President of the Czech Republic: Mr. Václav Klaus, among other Czech personalities. Oldřich Kulhánek, presently lives and works in Prague, and is the President of the Hollar Foundation. His works are included in many world famous collections: The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France The Albertina, Vienna, Austria Kupferstichkabinet, Dresden, Germany The National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, U.S.A. The Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, U.S.A. University of Houston Clear Lake, Houston, U.S.A. Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels, Belgium Wallraf - Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Holland Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany Musee d Art et d Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark Oldřich Kulhánek s works are mainly represented at: M&K Gallery, U Lužického semináře 10, Prague, Czech Republic Anne & Jacques Baruch Collection, Chicago, U.S.A. Epreuve d Artiste, Oude Kerkstraat 64, Antwerp, Belgium Koplin Del Rio Gallery, Los Angeles, U.S.A. Special Dialogue No. 3 - lithograph, 2000 I think that the life and the world in which we live is not a walk through the garden of paradise, and the lightness of being is just a nice dream; the reality is really more complicated... 10

7 In the drawings and lithographs of Oldřich Kulhánek, expession, gesture and movement are the material to comment on life, human values, the rise and fall of humanity. The highly narrative character of the pictures captivates the viewer and does not allow for any verbalization. Kulhánek is as good a psychologist as he is an observer, and above all he is an artist who is highly skilled in the techniques of his art. There can be little doubt that he is one of the most outstanding contemporary graphic artists. Eva Petrová, PhD., art historian Prague The most powerful of the works are three drawings that reconfigure the biblical trials of Job as a series of gestures and convulsions undergone by a single male figure. Applied over a lithographed field of soft gray, which the figure desperately reaches beyond in places, the drawing is precise but almost painfully emotional. Holly Myers Los Angeles Times The Eastern European school of Gothic realism (a label rendered oxymoronic by many of the tendency s extremely surrealistic artists) endures especially in the graphic arts. Oldřich Kulhánek s large drawings pit impossibly voluptuous (although hardly sexy) figures in conflict, not always physical, with one another, and sometimes subjects these writhing forms (and distorted faces) to a strange, stuttering repetition, so abstract and formal amidst the Michelangelesque grunting and groaning. Peter Frank, art historian Los Angeles Oldřich Kulhánek is a dramatic and pugnacious moralist raging against baseness, cruelty, insensitivity and stupidity, and at the same time a sympathetic witness of endings, gutterings, mistakes and losses, beauties and horrors. The intensity with which he addresses his public resides in the credibility of his passion, in the marriage of his artistic mastery, his intellectual penetration and sharpness, together with his emotional participation in the human situation. Dr. Bohuslav Holý, art historian Prague Nakedness in Kulhánek s Adam and Eve is a requirement of their iconography, but his specific image implies that their original sin was not sexual intercourse, but rather the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge which unleashed human destructive potential. Henry F. Klein Los Angeles

ANCA E. PARVULESCU. Department of English Washington University Campus Box 1122 St. Louis MO

ANCA E. PARVULESCU. Department of English Washington University Campus Box 1122 St. Louis MO August 2013 ANCA E. PARVULESCU Department of English Washington University Campus Box 1122 St. Louis MO 63130 ancaparvulescu@wustl.edu ACADEMIC POSITIONS 2012- Associate Professor, Washington University