Karel Pauzer

Karel Pauzer (born 4 December 1936) is a Czech sculptor, ceramist, painter, printmaker and restorer.

Life Pauzer was born in Prague in 1936. From his early youth he was interested in nature, and during holidays in the countryside he drew and modelled in clay. In the ceramic workshop of the David family in Štěchovice, he began working with basic techniques at the age of 12, and later built his own ceramic kiln.

Between 1951 and 1955 he studied at the Higher School of Art Industry in Vinohrady and at the Industrial School of Housing Design in Žižkov, Prague. In 1955, he was admitted to the sculpture studio of Profesoor Jan Kavan at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (VŠUP), majoring in building ceramics, and he met his wife Hana Purkrábková there. He graduated from the school in 1961, and after completing military service from 1961 to 1963 participated in group exhibitions of young artists at home and abroad (Sweden, West Berlin, Amsterdam) from 1966 to 1968. In 1969 he took part in the New Figuration exhibition at the Mánes Gallery in Prague and the House of Arts in Brno, and in the art event Sculpture and the City in Liberec. He presented a solo exhibition at the Václav Špála Gallery in Prague in 1969, featuring a representative set of themes which he then developed in his subsequent work.

After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, he was unable to exhibit without registration in the normalization Union of Visual Artists, and worked in isolation as a restorer from 1971 to 1989, salvaging sculptures in the area of the north Bohemian brown coal basin. and in 1991 the Lipany association of artists (Galerie Fronta, Prague 1991). He is a member of the Association of Ceramic Artists.

Pauzer lives and works in Brunšov.

Work Sculptures From the beginning of his work, Karel Pauzer has preferred modelling in ceramic clay, leaving the sculptures in the natural colour of the material or enhancing them with polychromy. For larger sculptures he later used the lightness and strength of synthetic resins (often in conjunction with ceramic materials), less often working with cement and metal.

According to Jiří Šetlík, Pauzer came to the school with a preconceived, not very optimistic view of the world and people. His work stems from an inner restlessness and the artist becomes a kind of modern mystic of natural events. Among the artists of his generation, he appears as a solitaire who does not succumb to the pressures or artistic currents of the time. He belongs to the artists who are so familiar with nature that they can compete with it. which more or less freely quote some natural structures (egg, berry, shell, etc.). He does not seek superficial descriptions of banal situations, and although his depictions of animals may resemble gothic gargoyles, mannerist animal monsters or are classified for their external similarity with the so-called "czech grotesque", they are always a purely private reflection of the world, turned more inward than outward. His sculptural works are directed towards the human soul, its terrors and pent-up instincts, eternal restlessness, feelings of threat and alienation.

Pauzer's sculptures have made him one of the most important authors of the animal genre in world sculpture. He continues the tradition of Baroque expressionism, which he revalues in a new way. With the ease of a creator and in exaggeration, he composes surrealistic giant clawed feet, attaches insect wings to stems, provides the targets of liverworts with manes, freely combines joints, antennae, claws, carnivorous leaves, tongues, eyes. The names of these artificial resin formations reflect a subtly tinted lyricism (Big broadleave, Sixfingered, Snakefly, Little Mouths).

Zoobotanical sculptures

Prints and drawings From the 1970s onwards, his graphic sheets, usually a combination of etching and aquatint, develop the same theme. They are characterised by an emphasis on volume, but also by a looser representation of figures and an expressiveness

Large-scale drawings combined with watercolour tend towards abstraction, but original natural elements can be traced in them, reminiscent of embryonic tissues, cell cultures, emerging life and its demise.

Drawings and paintings

Representation in collections National Gallery in Prague Moravian Gallery in Brno Aleš South Bohemia Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou Klatovy / Klenová Gallery Gallery of Fine Art in Ostrava Czech Museum of Fine Arts North Bohemian Gallery of Fine Art in Litoměřice Gallery of Modern Art in Roudnice nad Labem Regional Gallery in Liberec Benedikt Rejt Gallery in Louny Private collections at home and abroad

Selected exhibitions 1966 Exhibition of the Young / Exposition des jeunes, House of the Lords of Kunštát, Brno 1968 Sex Från Prag, Konstforum, Norrköping, Stenhusgården, Linköping, Sweden 1968 300 painters, sculptors, printmakers of 5 generations for 50 years of the Republic, Prague 1969 Zestien Tsjechische kunstenaars. Dertien grafici en drie keramisten, Galerie de Tor, Amsterdam 1969 Junge Künstler aus der ČSSR, Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin 1970 Sodobna češkoslovaška umetnost, Mestna galerija Ljubljana, Mestna galerija Piran, Salon ULUH, Zagreb 1970 Confrontation II, Nova Gallery, Prague 1983 3. Biennale der Europäischen Grafik, Baden-Baden 1989 L´Europe des Graveurs, Bibliothèque municipale, Grenoble 1989 Restoration Art 1948–1988, Mánes Gallery, Prague 1990/91 New group: member exhibition, Prague, Opava, Sýpka Gallery, Vlkov 1991 Counter the Wall, Fronta Gallery, Prague 1992 Contemporary East European Ceramics, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia 1992 Czech Fine Art 1960–1990, Central Bohemian Gallery, Prague 1992/2003 Minisalon, Prague, Mons, Cincinnati, New York, Hollywood, Albuquerque, Indianapolis, Chicago, Rapids, North Dartmouth, St. Petersburg, Florida, Columbia, Prague Castle, Brussels, Ubud, Surabaya, Jakarta, Paris 1993/94 New Figuration, North Bohemian Gallery of Fine Arts in Litoměřice, East Bohemia Gallery, Pardubice, Moravian Gallery in Brno, House of Art, Opava, Regional Gallery of the Highlands in Jihlava 1996 Neuburg An Der Donau - Rathausplatz, Regensburg - Salzstadel 1996/97 Umění zastaveného času / Art when time stood still, Czech Art Scene 1969–1985, Prague, Brno, Cheb 1999 The Art of Accelerated Time. Czech Art Scene 1958 - 1968, Prague, Cheb 2000 Two Ends of the Century 1900, 2000, House of the Black Mother of God, Prague 2005 Osteuropäische Keramik - Geforme Erde, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Schwandorf 2008/09 Czech and Slovak Art of the 1960s, Zlín, Ostrava 2009 Sculpture and the City of Liberec 1969. Exhibition about the exhibition, Regional Gallery in Liberec 2010 New Sensitivity, National Art Museum of China, Beijing 2015 Karel Pauzer, Hana Purkrábková, Gallery of the State Castle and Chateau in Jindřichův Hradec 2017 Karel Pauzer / Hana Purkrábková: Bytosti / Creatures, Gallery of modern art, Roudnice nad Labem 2022 Karel Pauzer: Sochy a kresby / Sculptures and Drawings, Millennium Gallery, Prague 2025/2026 Karel Pauzer, Biosphera, Museum Kampa