Ivo Křen

Ivo Křen (6 February 1964 – 9 May 2020) was a Czech graphic artist, art glass theoretician and curator.

Life After graduating from grammar school in Pardubice (1979–82) Ivo Křen studied art education and Czech language at the Faculty of Pedagogics, University of Hradec Králové, under Prof. Bořivoj Borovský. He briefly worked as a teacher and then worked at the East Bohemian Gallery and since 1989 at the East Bohemian Museum in Pardubice.

He was a member of the Association of Czech Graphic Artists Hollar, the Rubikon art group and the Academy of Design of the Czech Republic. He has exhibited independently since 1991 and presented his graphic works at many joint exhibitions around the world.

He was associated with the graphic artists of the middle generation of the Association of Czech Graphic Artists HOLLAR in Prague and received awards for his work using a multi-coloured linocut technique.

As the organizer of the permanent exhibition Czech Glass of the 20th Century and curator of the art and industrial collections of the East Bohemian Museum in Pardubice (1992), he managed the collection of studio glass. Ivo Křen was a founding member, curator of exhibitions and author of texts of Rubikon Group (1998), a group of prominent Czech glassmakers. With the Rubikon group, he has presented his work in Germany, Austria, Iceland, France, Belgium and Italy. He mastered the technique of multi-coloured linocut, where colour is a carrier of meaning and part of the expression of all sensory perceptions and emotional connections. Linocut allows him a sweeping gesture of colour and the alternation of surfaces with minute details of structures, blending monumentality with fragility. in a figurative sense the recesses of the soul, the mystery of the unknowable and an expression of the subjective search for balance and order.

As a graphic designer Ivo Křen was involved in the creation of posters and typographic design of book publications of the Rubikon Group and some small occasional prints.

Representation in collections

State Museum, Majdanek, Poland Cremona Civic Museum – Prints Cabinet, Cremona, Italy Museum Narodowe, Warsaw, Poland National Museum, Kraków, Poland Stadt Weiden, Regionalbibliothek, Weiden, Germany Schio Municipal Collection, Schio, Italy Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Prague Gallery Klatovy – Klenová Regional Gallery Liberec Art Gallery Karlovy Vary East Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice Forbo linoleum BV, Prague Town Museum and Gallery Polička Municipal Library in Prague Cabinet Ex libris, Chrudim

Gallery