Vladimír Vašíček

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Vladimír Vašíček (born September 29, 1919 in Mistřín , † August 29, 2003 in Svatobořice ) was a Czech painter of abstract painting .

Life

Vašíček was born into a farming family. From 1935 to 1938 he did an apprenticeship in the workshop of Antonín Sychra in Kyjov, who specialized in decorating churches. There he met Jan Köhler, an Art Nouveau painter whose designs were realized in this workshop. In 1938 he found employment as an advertising painter in a private company in Zlín . In the salons of Zlín he got to know contemporary visual arts. This occupation did not last long, because in 1939 he was used for forced labor in the German Reich . He was briefly used in the construction of the Munich-Innsbruck railway line , then at a painting company in Linz . In December he was singled out for physical frailty and returned to Zlín, where he was enrolled at the Baťa Art School from the spring of 1940 to 1944. The private art school founded by Jan Antonín Baťa , headed by the architect František Kadlec, was progressive and followed the pre-war practice of the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau . The architect František Lydie Gahura (who designed many of the town's buildings), the urban planner Bohuslav Fuchs , the avant-garde sculptor and machine designer Vincenc Makovský, the sculptor and medalist Luděk Havelka, the painters Richard Wiesner, Josef Kousal, and Vladimír Hroch taught there , Jan Sládek and Eduard Milén as well as the art historians Albert Kutal, Oldřich Stefan and Václav V. Štech. His fellow students were for example Václav Chad, Čestmír Kafka, Miroslav Šimorda, Jan Rajlich, Miloslav Čevela, Jiří Hejna and many other important artists of the country. His training included work in the design office of the Baťa factories , which are leading in the field of industrial shoe manufacture , which Vašíček completed in the academic year 1944/1945. The office was headed by the architect Vladimír Karfík . In May 1945 he continued his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague , where he was supervised by Professor Vratislav Nechleba. Among his fellow students were Karel Teissig, Richard Fremund and Mojmír Hamsík. In 1946 he finally moved to Professor Ján Želibský's studio, where he met Miroslav Tichý , Ladislav Čepelák , Vladislav Vaculka and Viera Kraicová. In 1946 he visited the exhibitions of the “Paris Spanish School”, František Kupka's life's work between 1880 and 1946, and a posthumous one by the painter Josef Čapek , who was murdered in the concentration camp , which left lasting impressions on him. In 1947 he married Bozena Žďárská. In 1948, at the end of his studies, he belonged to R. Fremund, M. Tichý, J. Dostál, J. Kolínská and a few others in a group of budding artists around the painter Jiří Martin. Martin passed on experiences and knowledge that he had gained during his previous stay in Paris , which young people thirsted for because they did not like the hermetically sealed anti-modern doctrine of officially proclaimed socialist realism . After obtaining his diploma, he joined the Association of Czechoslovak Visual Artists and did an abbreviated military service. In 1949 he left Prague to return to his home village in Svatobořice-Mistřín, where he settled permanently as a freelance artist in isolation from the regulated cultural scene. In the same year he had his first solo exhibition in Kyjov, which he had organized himself. In Brno he became a member of the Aleš Association of Visual Artists (SVU Aleš) and met Bohumir Matal and Jan Kubíček.

From around 1950, when the Stalinist ideology penetrated deeply into the Czech cultural area, he established close contacts with like-minded Moravian artists who were also unwilling to adapt . Among the visual artists, besides Matal and Kubíček, it was mainly Vaculka and Tichý. These five painters stuck to the progressive idea and tried to build on the Czech pre-war tradition in the field of abstraction, keep pace with Western trends and create abstract Czech post-war art. Vašíček was ideologically criticized and economically suppressed in Gottwaldov, the renamed Zlín, in 1951 by the district organization of the SČSVU (Svaz čs. Výtvarných umělců; German Association of Czechoslovak Fine Artists). For a few years he had to remain inconspicuous. In 1956, especially in anticipation of seeing exhibits from other European countries, he visited the exhibition of the Cubism Collection of the National Gallery in Prague, which Dr. Vincenc Kramář had been given. In 1959 a study trip to the Soviet Union took place. In the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and in the Hermitage in Leningrad, today's Saint Petersburg , he was particularly drawn to the works of European modern painting. By 1960, the year in which he met Oskar Kokoschka and Giacomo Manzú in Salzburg , Vašíček's special abstract painting style had developed. This was already taken into account in the Vašíček retrospective 1951–1961 in the Mánes artists' club in Prague in early 1962.

In 1962 a study trip to Poland took place. In Gdansk and Warsaw he made contact with colleagues and in the art scene. A study trip to Bulgaria followed in 1963 and in 1964 he continued his Polish relations on two further visits. The first contact was made with the Museum of Modern Art in Łódź . The next travel destinations in 1965 were the GDR and the Soviet Union, then France, where he visited Paris and Toulon. In 1966 he went on a study trip through Hungary. Meanwhile, pictures of him were exhibited in the "Czechoslovak Art Show" in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt. His next stay in Paris, in 1967, was combined with a trip to Normandy. In 1968 he visited Paris again. When the Prague Spring came to a violent end, he fled the Czechoslovakia to Switzerland with the help of the future Swiss Federal President Hans-Rudolf Merz . Two large Vašíček exhibitions took place there, one in St. Gallen and one in Biel / Bienne . In 1969 he also took part in the painting and sculpture exhibition in Pistoia, Italy (Rassegna di pittura e scultura città di Pistoia). After the political situation had calmed down in 1970, Vašíček decided to return to his homeland. In the following years he maintained his contacts in Poland and France through personal visits. But the repression under the slogan of an alleged "normalization" in their own country increased again. Between 1972 and 1978 he was forced out of public cultural life. In order to make a living, he took a job as a restorer in Moravian churches. He also watched friends go into exile . For the artists who remained in the country, who fell out of the norm, his remote studio finally became a meeting point.

In 1979 a phase of relaxation set in again and for his 60th birthday there was an anniversary exhibition of his life's work in the Gallery of Fine Arts in Hodonín (Göding). Since then, Vašíček has been recognized again. In the 1980s / 1990s he had several domestic work presentations. He died on August 29, 2003 in Svatobořice-Mistřín.

Style, impact and position in the art world

Vašíček mainly painted with oil paint on canvas, more rarely gouaches and only a few oil paintings on cardboard or wood. His early motifs were girls and landscapes, whereby in some cases a color component stands out in a Fauvist manner, such as the bright red hair of the girl with red hair ( Dívka s rudými vlasy ) or the bright yellow face of the girl in a scarf ( Děvče v šátku ). Still lifes were added in the 1950s. The forms took on slight cubist traits, for example in Still Life with Radiant Heaters ( Zatiší s teplometem ) Around 1960, abstraction, often executed with chiseled curves and lines, set in, which he retained until his death.

He was a nonconformist , indomitable at all times to the state doctrine of socialist realism. He curled up in the seclusion of his village origins. The art that emerged in this seclusion only gradually flowed into the national art scene and was later recognized internationally without ever having received the level of recognition it was entitled to.

Vladimír Vašíček's abstract work is very extensive and coherent in its form and content. Due to its variety of meanings and multi-dimensional stratification, it appears aloof. One can feel the meaning intuitively, but cannot describe it in words. Vasicek speaks to us in a visual language that evokes memories associatively and at the same time influences our spiritual reality. The almost provocative method worries us, but at the same time attracts us. Josef Maliva said in his work description from 1993 that on the one hand the paintings reflected the artist's philosophy and understanding of the world with all their “incompatible polarities”, and on the other hand they contained “experiences of simple natural wonders”: “Poetry of rural fields, meadows [and] nd gardens of sunny South Moravia ”. Jaroslav Kačer named him a pioneer of Czech abstract painting in 1996, on a par with Jan Kotík , Jiří Balcar and Aleš Veselý .

Collections

Honors

  • 1995: Prize of the "Masarykova akademie umění"
  • 1996: František Kupka Prize of the Association of Czech Graphic Artists
  • 2002: Kyjov's honorary citizenship

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Vladimír Vašíček. * 1919 - † 2003, Česká republika. In: artmuseum.cz. May 25, 2007, Retrieved May 12, 2016 (Czech).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Jaroslav Kačer: Vladimír Vašíček. Obrazy 1949-1996. Moravská Gallery Brno 1996. Pražákův palác, Husova 18, 10. října - 17. listopadu 1996 . 1996, ISBN 80-7027-055-1 , Životopisné Údaje, p. 44 f .
  3. ↑ a b Veronika Loušová: Přistřižená křídla. Vzpomínková kniha Jana Rajlicha na školu umění ve Zlíně má dnes v podvečer křest. In: czechdesign.cz. November 23, 2005, accessed May 12, 2016 (Czech).
  4. ↑ Vladimír Vašíček: Rytmus vesnice, Kvaš a olej . In: Svaz Československých Výtvarných Umělců [Ger. Union of Czechoslovak Artists] (Ed.): Výtvarné umění . 12th year, no. 3/1962 , 1962, pp. 139 .
  5. ↑ a b c akad. malíř Vašíček Vladimír. Updates copy stránky na www.sca-art.cz. In: sweb.cz. Retrieved May 12, 2016 (Czech).
  6. ↑ Ghadhafi now has three Swiss hostages. Comment on the diplomatic extra tour of Federal Councilor Merz in Libya. In: nzz.ch. August 23, 2009. Retrieved May 12, 2016 .
  7. ↑ a b Federal Councilor Merz as an escape helper. Smuggled a friend from Czechoslovakia at the age of 26. In: nzz.ch. August 18, 2009, accessed May 12, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Displaying artworks uploaded by member art.vasicek.contact. In: the-athenaeum.org. August 2, 2014, accessed May 12, 2016 .
  9. ↑ a b c Jaroslav Kačer: Vladimír Vašíček. Obrazy 1949-1996. Moravská Gallery Brno 1996. Pražákův palác, Husova 18, 10. října - 17. listopadu 1996 . 1996, ISBN 80-7027-055-1 , [untitled introductory text ], p. 5 ff .
  10. ↑ Vladimír Vašíček, Paleta žhavená sluncem jihu Moravy. In: slovackemuzeum.cz. 2010, accessed May 12, 2016 (Czech).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Vašíček, Vladimír
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech painter
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Mistřín
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 2003
Place of death Svatobořice