František Lesák

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František (also Franz) Lesák (* 1943 in Prague ) is a Czech-Austrian sculptor , draftsman and conceptual artist .

life and work

After completing his training as a stone sculptor at the arts and crafts secondary school in Uherské Hradiště , ČSSR, Lesák was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU) in 1964. In the same year he emigrated to Vienna. There he continued his studies at the Academy of Applied Arts (today University of Applied Arts ) in Vienna. Between 1972 and 1977 he stayed in Amsterdam for a long time with the support of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (studio program for foreign artists). This resulted in several exhibitions in the Netherlands. In 1978 he was invited to work in Berlin by the German artist program DAAD . From 1979 to 2003 he was full professor for sculptural design and model making at the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Planning at the Technical University in Vienna . In 1992 he was visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. A comprehensive retrospective took place in 1997 in the National Gallery in Prague , in the collection of modern and contemporary art.

Lesák works primarily in cycles in which he deals with specific artistic tasks. An early thematic complex includes the work groups “Shapes in the River” and “Interventions in the Landscape” . In his investigations of the landscape motif, Lesák deals with drawing as well as three-dimensional technoid interventions in the landscape. Sculptures and drawings such as B. “Ordered Landscapes” , “Divided Tree” and “Snowfall Line” as well as the installation “Tree disguised as a tree” demonstrate this principle. The group of works “Interventions in the Landscape” is almost completely in the collection of the FRAC Center in Orléans. With these works he took part in the exhibition series “Radical Architecture” , which was on view in Cologne, Lyon and Seville. Here the connection with the movement of the same name of the seventies becomes visible. In 1974 Lesák designed the cover for the magazine Casa Bella , in which this artistic tendency was prominently presented. As is typical for this phase of conceptual art, Lesák also incorporated performative strategies into his work. In “Erlebnis Sand” he was buried alive on the sandy beach in order to capture the spatial effect of his subsequent liberation action photographically.

With the advent of portable video recording systems in the 1970s, work began on experimental films. At Trigon '73 , one of the first exhibitions in Central Europe that turned to the new media, works were on view that dealt with the new electronic means of expression in a media-specific manner. In the video films such as "Demonstrationsfeld" or "Machtspiele" Lesák examined the relationship between real and media space.

In the cycle of fourteen large-format drawings entitled “Large Still Life” , which was created between 1974 and 1978, Lesák was concerned with depicting temporal processes in a rigid medium such as drawing. The exact inventory of everyday objects on dining or work tables, which he used as a projection surface and on which the objects changed their locations over a certain period of time (days or weeks), was the basis for a graphic documentation of this process. Another large group of works, “Morning-Noon-Evening” , arose from his preoccupation with Claude Monet's “haystack” motifs, which Lesák implemented as an example in the third dimension and a. at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Again and again, Lesák makes the problem of the many perspectives of an object the subject of his drawings. Against the limitation of being able to reproduce only one view in a drawing, Lesák developed a system in which he could record the different views of an object, its front and back, in several phases. This resulted in several cycles, u. a. “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet” (1987), “The Hermes Head of Praxiteles - Dotting with Light” (2003-2010) and “Forest Landscapes” (2014).

Lesák is the author of numerous texts that comment on his own work as well as generally addressing questions of perception and space.

He lives in Vienna and Neu-Nagelberg (Gem. Brand-Nagelberg ), Lower Austria.

Awards

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions (selection)

  • 2014 House of Art and Architecture, Ceske Budejovice
  • 2007 Cora Hölzl Gallery, Düsseldorf
  • 2006 Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna
  • 2003 Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna
  • 2001 Künstlerhaus, Vienna
  • 1997 National Gallery, Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, Prague
  • 1995 Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation, Vienna
  • 1995 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
  • 1994 New gallery at the Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz
  • 1987 New gallery at the Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz
  • 1980 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
  • 1977 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
  • 1977 Gallery next to St. Stephan, Vienna
  • 1973 Galerie de Mangelgang, Groningen
  • 1973 Galleria del Cavallino, Venice
  • 1972 New gallery at the Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz
  • 1971 Bochum Art Museum

Group exhibitions (selection)

  • 2015 "Relief (s). Designing the Horizon “ , FRAC Center, Orléans
  • 2009 "Peace is a special case of movement" , Kunstmuseum Vaduz / Liechtenstein
  • 2006 “Architecture as it is in the book” , Architecture Museum in the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
  • 2002–2004 “radical architecture” , Cologne, Lyon, Seville
  • 1984 “Drawings 1974–1984” , Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington
  • 1975 Trigon '75, “Identity” , Künstlerhaus, Graz
  • 1973 Trigon '73, “Audiovisual Messages” , Künstlerhaus, Graz
  • 1973 “ Biennale de jeunesse” , Paris

Works in public collections

  • Albertina, Vienna
  • FRAC Center, Orléans
  • Bochum Art Museum
  • Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg
  • Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation, Vienna
  • Lower Austrian State Museum, St. Pölten
  • State Gallery, Stuttgart
  • Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
  • Stedelijk van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven
  • Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

literature

  • Because art is created. Art never ends. Active (places) in Lower Austria . Volume I, ed. Office of the Lower Austrian Provincial Government, Residenz Verlag, St. Pölten, Salzburg, Vienna, 2014, pp. 356–359
  • Aurélien Vernant, František Lesák , in: art & architecture. Collection du FRAC Center sous la direction de Marie-Ange Brayer. Orléans, 2013, pp. 236-239
  • Franz Schuh, Space in Space . A topophile feature section, in: František Lesák. Spatial German . Künstlerhaus, Vienna, 2001, oS
  • Exhibition catalog, National Gallery, Modern and Contemporary Art Collection, Prague, 1997
  • Exhibition catalog, Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation, Vienna 1995
  • Ineke Middag, Morning-Midday-Evening: Study after a motif by Claude Monet. Sculptures and drawings by František Lesák , in: van gogh bulletin. 1992/2, pp. 6-9
  • Exhibition catalogs, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, 1972, 1984, 1994
  • Karel Schippers, Blauwdruk , in: KS Museo Sentimental . Amsterdam, Querido Verlag, 1989, pp. 195-198
  • Moser, Ulrike, The Problem of Realizing Reality with František Lesák . Diploma thesis. Institute for Art History, Karl-Franzens University, Graz 1988
  • Frank Gettings, in: Drawings 1974–1984, exhibition catalog. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington 1984, pp. 15-27, 150-155
  • Exhibition catalog, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1977
  • Paola Navone and Bruno Orlandoni, Architettura 'radicale' . documenti di Casabella, Milan, 1974, pp. 60, 128, 140, 162
  • Georg F. Schwarzbauer, Das Ding, die Dinge , in: Frankfurter Rundschau, January 26, 1971
  • John Muller, Lesák , in: NRC Handelsblad, Rotterdam, October 22, 1971
  • Exhibition catalog, Kunstmuseum Bochum, 1971

Own texts (selection)

  • Wespennest, No. 119, Vienna 2003, pp. 82–85, No. 132, Vienna 2000, pp. 105–110
  • Command rooms. About the loneliness of a mass gymnast , in: Hermann Hendrich (ed.), Raum, vivid. On the phenomenology of architectural space . Gumpoldskirchen - Vienna, [-de'A-] Verlag 2007
  • Precision as a virtue, as a necessity, as an end in itself , in: Ákos Moravánszky, Ole W. Fischer (eds.), Precisions. Architecture between science and art. Architecture between Sciences and Arts , TheoryBau Volume 1. German, English Berlin, jovis Verlag 2008, pp. 138–165
  • “… Vidím jen to, co vím” ( “… I only see what I know” , German), selected texts (1973–2013) in Czech, archa publishing house, Zlín, 2013
  • Adhering to the Text: Notes on the Observation and Description of a House in a Novel , in: Joseph Masheck (ed.), Mostly Modern: Essays in Art and Architecture . Hudson Hills Press, 2015
  • Houses under observation: texts on perception and description. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2017

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.wespennest.at/w_zeitschrift.php?id=MTMy
personal data
SURNAME Lesák, František
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lesák, Frantischek
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech-Austrian sculptor, draftsman and concept artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague