It has been five years since an exhibition of paintings with Prague themes by Vojtěch Kolařík cheered art lovers in the legendary German port. It took place on 21 March 2019 in the popular "tsechischen Café TRDLO FACTORY" and attracted in large numbers not only our compatriots living or staying there by the sea. This cultural event was held on the occasion of the centenary of the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic. It was a great success and after some time the idea was born to repeat the exhibition, this time at home, in Prague.
The curator Olga Konvalinková from Gallery AA na Újezdu, who has good experience with the exhibitions of the artist, took on this nice task and is sure that this time too, the visitors will fill all the spaces of their exhibition stand. Kolařík has been exhibiting here regularly for many years. Lately he has been presenting his popular Picasso line of subjects, which he calls Faces and Hands or Fairy Dreams, as his last presentation last year was called, here at the House at Černohorské AA Gallery.
What we should know
Vojtěch Kolařík (born 1938 in Třebíč), painter, graphic designer and illustrator, has had a long series of exhibitions at home and abroad. He is represented in private and public collections in the Czech Republic and abroad. He began his artistic career at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, studying scenography under Professor František Tröster and painting and drawing under Associate Professor Oldřich Smutný.
Set design, which is his destiny, led him to a career as a set designer at Czech Television, where for almost a quarter of a century he participated in the visual design of its broadcasts. He has designed costumes, composed sets, and other artistic matters in television films, series and cultural programmes of many types and focus. It was in this activity that the art of clean line and artistic shorthand, which we find today in his drawings, book illustrations and paintings, got into his blood. He does not deny the influence of the legendary Pablo Picasso, but rather likes to claim his great model as his own.
Kolařík's long-term success in his television work has been significantly aided by his freelance work. And this, as art historian František Malina, an expert on Kolařík's work, notes, was in turn enriched and enriched by the typical elements of television vision - for example, the cut, the detail, the semi-detail, everything important placed in the foreground of the artwork.
Vojtěch Kolařík's painting manuscript is, as we have already indicated, based on drawing and colour minimalism. He deliberately disturbs the space and depth of the painting. He avoids illusionistic modelling and perspective. It counts on the artistic effect of only a painted area here and there, which enhances the impact of the tightly drawn line. Everything is in the spirit of simplification, renouncing the abundance of detail and richness of colour in favour of punchiness. The artist's work with the diagonal is also a distinctive, dynamic, even dramatic element emphasizing the flatness of the picture.
The planar representation leads to the placement of figures and objects above each other - smaller and higher situated figures indicate distance. The oversized figures and heads in the foreground then draw the viewer into the atmosphere and the action - adding suggestiveness to the canvases and underlining the compositional principle. As PhDr. Malina says in his evaluation, the typical line of Vojtěch Kolařík imbues the painting with dynamism and impressiveness. The limited register of colours then gives it a special atmosphere and tension, precipitating the likability. The free surface, painted only here and there, seems to bring an extra abstract, rational light into the picture, which stabilizes the subject in all its clarity. The heightened tones of colour also have a symbolic expression and underline the plot.
Prague snapshots
We are looking at the collection of paintings prepared for the aforementioned exhibition, which will take place in the spring of the twenty-fifth year. The opening ceremony will take place on 28 April and the opening of the exhibition will take place on 17 May 2025. The exhibition consists of thirty works of more or less well-known scenes of Prague's corners, streets, bridges and parks, painted in acrylic on xylolite panels in a classical style. But don't expect Šikaneder's twilight or Šetelík's documentary view or Líbal's fireworks of colours. This time, Vojtěch Kolařík broke away from his creative line-up and for a while gave in to academicism. He abandoned his favourite postmodernism, he did not even render the veduta on his usual recycled material, i.e. packing cartons, replacing the canvas on which, unlike him, the vast majority of artists paint.
But it would not be him if he did not add at least a few of these unique pieces to the exhibition, as the attached photographs from his Vinohrady studio convince us. His so characteristic faces and hands in the Prague environment are therefore not missing to our delight.
And just like years ago in Hamburg, this exhibition is held on the occasion of the celebration of the founding of our republic, but this year for the hundred and fifth time.
Kolařík's creative stages
While Pablo Picasso, Kolařík's lover and his great role model in the art of expressing himself with a simple pencil line, soared from the blue period to the pink period, and then through analytical cubism to synthetic cubism, Kolařík spent thirty-five years designing sets, costumes and backdrops for theatres, television and film studios. He then devoted himself to the unique painting of shooting, which stood well in competition with historical ones. There was such a demand for them that for many years he painted a dozen a month. However, he did not usually choose his subjects from among traditional hunting scenes, but portrayed successfully with caricature exaggeration, for example, Emperor Rudolf II, or the Emperor Franz Joseph, or Queen Elizabeth of England. These works of art were in great demand, especially in German-speaking countries and overseas. He combined their work with graphic art and book illustrations, among other things he decorated a number of collections of poetry by Karel Sýs and the poet Eva Frantinová.
The proverbial cherry on top of the imaginative artist's work are his paintings on glass, especially bottles and demijohns. Prague still lifes are an unforgettable theme of his art.
But we cannot forget The Woman, the eternal subject of this master craftsman. In his Commedia dell arte, the landscape of human comedy, the primate Eve plays a major role. If not the most important, as the art historian Malina says above. There was a relatively long period in Kolařík's artistic shorthand when landscapes, abstract, imaginary dominated, until the situation reversed - today's Kolařík is primarily a figurative painter.
However, landscape remains in his work, even if only hinted at, and is present in his last paintings. Each time, however, in connection with a woman. A woman whose natural adornment can be a butterfly or flowers instead of hair and whose breasts are as round as the hills of the Bohemian Central Highlands. However, Vojtěch Kolařík rarely paints a woman as a first-rate nude. And the sensitive viewer understands what is going on. Men kidnap women, women manipulate men. But let's not play with words, it is better to form your own opinion about Kolařík's work. And you can't do that without a visit to his exhibition at Prague's Ujezd Gallery in the House at Černohorské, which runs from 28 April to 17 May 2025.
gnews.cz - Ivan Černý
PHOTO - Jiří Vlastník
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