Miroslav Tichý

Miroslav Tichý (born November 20, 1926 in Nětčice , Moravia , † April 12, 2011 in Kyjov ) was a Czech photographer and painter .

Life

Tichý attended the Prague Art Academy in the late 1940s and was considered a talented painter and draftsman . After the communists came to power , his life changed. He stayed repeatedly in psychiatric institutions and spent half a year in prison in 1970/71. After that, he became an outsider in society, he neglected his appearance and no longer washed. His coat, which he first mended with a needle and thread, and later increasingly with wire, was locally famous. After losing his studio, he turned to drawing and photography. He also constructed his own cameras for this purpose , the lenses of which consisted of old glasses or cut Plexiglas, lenses made of toilet rolls or tin cans and cardboard housings that are held together with tar and chewing gum and a trigger made of an old rubber band.

With these cameras, he used to search for his subjects every day. It was primarily women, young girls sunbathing or in the park, older women in the market and on the street. His predilection for women and their bodies is referred to by some as voyeurism and by others as an homage to the female figure. He himself said that he only represented what was real. Also noteworthy is the sheer amount of photographs Tichý took. For years he supposedly had the maxim to shoot a certain number of pictures every day, for a long time it was 3 films of 36 pictures per day.

He developed the blurry and washed-out photographs himself; on them there are almost always bromine stains, fingerprints or the occasional fly. In Tichý's opinion, imperfection is part of his art. He often stuck the pictures themselves on found paper or cardboard and decorated them with different pens. He traced individual parts of the photographs that he wanted to emphasize, thus enhancing the desired image effect. This resulted in a large number of unique items that were already worth 12,000 euros to collectors and found their way into private and public collections. Tichý became internationally known through the curator Harald Szeemann , who exhibited his works at the 2004 Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla . Tichý's pictures were presented in numerous solo exhibitions in the following years, including in Zurich , Berlin , New York , London , Vancouver , Tokyo , Beijing , Paris , Madrid , Vienna , Prague , Mannheim .

Tichý himself lived in seclusion in Kyjov until his death in 2011 and repeatedly expressed disapproval of his late fame. In view of the difficult estate situation and his existence as a local eccentric, the research and evaluation of Tichý's life and work are not yet complete.

Exhibitions

• 2013: Exhibition: Miroslav Tichý: The City of Women, ZEPHYR, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim
• 2010/2011: Exhibition: Miroslav Tichý in Prague, 2010/2011
• 2011: Exhibition: Miroslav Tichý in Zurich by Palladio on August 5, 2011 in Exhibitions & Art

Web links

• Foundation Tichý Océan: [1]
• Literature by and about Miroslav Tichý in the catalog of the German National Library
• Documentary about Miroslav Tichý: WORLDSTAR
• Online edition of "Zeit": [2]
• Online edition of the "Stern": [3]
• Article in "Art Magazin": [4]
• Online article at Scribol: The Primitive Cameras of Czechoslovakia's Unkempt Peeping Photographer

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cult photographer Miroslav Tichy has died. In: ORF , April 13, 2011.
2. ↑ Tobias Brücker: Miroslav Tichý: “This is not my exhibition!” ( Memento of the original from May 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: contextblog.ch , March 14, 2012. 
3. ^ Exhibition: Miroslav Tichý: The City of Women
4. ^ Exhibition: Miroslav Tichý in Zurich by Palladio on August 5, 2011 in exhibitions & art at Designguide Munich