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. 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
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Oldřich Kulhánek was born on the 26th 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 1968 –1971, 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 5th 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.
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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...
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