Stanislav Podhrázský

Stanislav Podhrázský (10 November 1920 – 20 May 1999) was a Czech painter, sculptor and restorer. He is one of the outstanding figuralists of Czech painting of the second half of the 20th century.

Life Stanislav Podhrázský was born in the family of a master bricklayer in Pejhov (now Pýchov, an integral part of Nová Včelnice). He trained as a room painter in the painting school of the Viennese decorator Emil Dvířka. In 1936 he went to Prague and continued his apprenticeship at the Černý firm in Žižkov. He lived in the family of the legionary Novák, where he painted his first portraits; he was an amateur boxer. In 1942–1944 he attended the carving specialty of Professor František Kment at the State Central School of Housing Industry in Prague, Žižkov.

In 1945 he was admitted to the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in the studio of Prof. František Tichý. His classmates were Zbyněk Sekal, Josef Lehoučka and from 1947 also Mikuláš Medek. Until 1949, he had the opportunity to attend lectures by Prof. Václav Nebeský, an important theoretician of Czech and French modern art, a member of the Tvrdošíjní group. Mikuláš Medek, influenced by interwar surrealism and familiar with the Minotaure, brought the impulses of surrealism to his classmates as well. During his studies, Podhrázský was in contact with the Surrealists of Spořilov, including his classmate Libor Fára. He was released from the hospital when Miloslav Chlupáč vouched for him. Between 1951 and 1953, due to mental illness, he hardly created at all and destroyed many of his surrealist sculptures and paintings from the time of his studies, which had too poignant a personal meaning and threatened him with their intensity.

Due to Podhrázský's experience with the masonry craft, Josef Wagner invited him to participate in his restoration commissions. From 1952 he worked as a fresco restorer, first in Fričovce, Slovakia (with Zdeněk Palcr and Miloslav Chlupáč), and later in Strakonice, Písek and Klatovy (1955-1956, with Zdeněk Palcr and Mikuláš Medek). He returned to free creative work in 1955. with which he exhibited until its dissolution in 1964. He had his first solo exhibition (together with sculptor Zdeněk Palcr) at the Aleš Hall of Umělecká beseda in Prague (1960).

In 1963, together with Zbyněk Sekal, he took part in a tour of the Artistˇs Union to the Leningrad Hermitage and at the same time became close to Jaroslava Červená, who married him in 1968. In 1963-1973, he spent summers with other artists (V. Kiml, J. Jíra, M. Preclík) at the Nezabudický mill on the Berounka River and often visited his birthplace.

Since the mid-1960s he had several solo exhibitions in Prague (1966, 1969), Brno (1966), Hradec Králové, Cheb (1969), Karlovy Vary (1971) and Litoměřice (1972). In 1968 he made his only trip to Italy (Venice, Ravenna, Florence).

With the beginning of normalization, he was forced to resume restoration for existential reasons and from 1974 to 1987 he worked in a team of restorers led by Olbram Zoubek (Z. Palcr, V. Boštík, etc.) at Litomyšl Castle. Litomyšl became important centre of unofficial culture, which included, for example, the philosopher Petr Rezek and František Šmejkal.

In the seventies and eighties he was not allowed to exhibit solo. The only exception is the exhibition at the Municipal Cultural Centre in Dobříš, prepared by Vladimíra Eidernová-Koubová and Marie Klimešová in January 1982. The vernissage became a cultural event, attended among others by the theoretician Jindřich Chalupecký and the director of the National Gallery Jiří Kotalík.

In 1990 Podhrázský had to leave his studio and apartment in the Malá Strana and moved with his wife Jaroslava to a tenement house in Vyšehrad. In the first years he still painted smaller formats there, but the cramped space did not satisfy his need for freedom, which he absolutely required to create, and from the mid-1990s he did not paint anymore.

Work In František Tichý's studio there were strict requirements for mastery of drawing and volume according to the model, and the inclination of many of his students towards surrealism can be explained by the overpressure of aggression, which they vented on personal and social traumas from the war and the following Communist coup of 1948. The work of the young generation of Surrealists after 1945 thus had little in common with the original Surrealist programme. The earliest drawing of a nude from 1946, which stands out from the rest of the work, reveals Podhrázský's influence on Czech poetism At the beginning of his studies, Podhrázský understood drawing in an almost hypersensitive way, as a dangerous activity that could harm a person.

He identified with the process of creation to the extent that he perceived it not only as a search for truth, but as a question of life and death. The introduction to surrealism had a dramatic effect on Podhrázský's hypersensitive nature and offered him creative freedom. His work from that time has an intuitive to mediumistic character and is characterized by a painterly culture. The numerous references to Mannerism in Podhrázský's paintings are related to his strong perception of the genius loci in his place of residence in the Lesser Town, where he "felt the presence of the Rudolphine painters from the nearby Jánský vrch and Vlašská Street", as well as his long direct experience with the restoration of Renaissance sgraffiti at the castle in Litomyšl

Sculptures In 1947-1948, sculptures strongly influenced by surrealism were created - Nun (plaster, destroyed) and the hallucinatory anxious vision Jeníček''' (plaster, National Gallery in Prague), which have no parallel in the sculptural work of the time and are considered a distinctive value of Czech post-war surrealism.

In the 1960s, when Podhrázský was influenced by the morphology of sculptures by M. Chlupáč and Z. Palcr, he briefly returned to sculpture. His Standing Torso (1964) is an assemblage of abstract elements, while Two Heads (1964), referring to the now missing sculpture Head from 1948, represents the theme of precariousness and stopping in motion. Torso from 1965 is an expression of existential distress - a delicately modelled girl figure is topped with a box as a symbol of psychological shelter, which turns the sculpture into an object. Podhrázský's own variant on seated figures by Palcr from the late 1950s (Seated Figure, 1968) is composed of a set of modelled boulders and relates to the work of Henry Moore. The schematically austere sculpture The Swordsman (1964, GVU Náchod) was probably created as a free model for the male figure from the painting The Couple (1965)

Drawings and paintings Stanislav Podhrázský is known primarily as a masterful draughtsman and painter. In the late 1940s, like many members of his generation (Medek, Sekal, Fára), he was influenced by Surrealism. This period was relatively short, because the frightening personal experience of exploring his own subconsciousness discouraged the author from further experiments. The most important works of this period are Head in the Mould (1948) and Imaginations of Fear (1949), a reflection on generational feeling. The painting is an aggressive metaphor of the terrible time after the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état Among the technical discoveries of the Surrealists, he uses grattage or decal in his work on the picture surface.

Already during his studies, he created the stylized Nude (1946), which is particularly notable for its luminous modelling of charcoal drawing. His graduation work was a slightly larger-than-life charcoal drawing, Large Study of the Nude (1950). His later large-scale drawings are also mostly studies of girls' figures, faces and hands. The charcoal drawing is sometimes combined with pastel (Drawing III, 1956).

In his drawings and paintings from the mid-1950s, when he returned to free work, he uses more formal attributes of surrealist painting - undefined space without perspective with mysterious objects, the motif of expansive body cavities and vegetation surrounding the girl figures (Girl at the Table, 1956, Drawing III, 1956). The surrealistic mythologization of reality in the recurring motif of the broken jug symbolizes the transition to adulthood and the loss of innocence (Broken Jug, 1956). Podhrázský may have been influenced by Heinrich von Kleist's then-published play Rozbitý džbán (Orbis, Prague 1954), in which a guilty man investigates a crime he himself has committed. The motif illustrates well the hypocrisy of the communist nomenklatura of the time. Two monumental pastels with the motif of a broken jug from 1956 could have been Podhrázský's competition designs for the new building of the Biophysical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Brno (1957).

Podhrázský's paintings have a complicated content, combining personal and generally valid meanings. In the charcoal and pastel drawing Broken Jug (1956), the already broken jug at the girl's feet opens up a world of knowledge and desire, symbolized by the large orchid flower above her head and the massive vertical of a tree with thorns. Another motif of the drawings was the theme of touch and physical intimacy of figurative couples - lovers or a mother with a child on her lap (Lovers, 1956, Motherhood, 1956).

In 1957-1959, he made a series of charcoal drawings of girls' semi-nudes. Some of these draw on his previous surrealist work and are characterised by deformations of physiognomy with hypertrophied body features and a taut, challenging physicality. Their carnality as a symbol of fertility and desire is archetypal in nature (Nude, 1957). The second part is sensually subtle, with elaborate hand gestures adjusting hair. They thus represent the rather lyrical emotion he was overwhelmed with in his dream. A separate element and emotional centre of the work until the 1960s were girl´s hair (Girl combing her hair, 1967. The disturbing motif of the averted figure (The Listener, 1969) refers to the imaginative context of his work

His figures of girls balancing between childhood and womanhood, teetering on the edge of purity and sin, show the fragile boundary between the two faces of human existence.

In the relaxed atmosphere of the late 1960s, Podhrázský draws a series of nudes and amorous couples, but his erotic themes are not explicit and maintain chastity (Undressing, 1970). Podhrázský was virtually untouched by the wave of New Figuration of the first half of the 1960s, and he made his mark on the Czech scene as a solitaire artist with his adherence to the classical conception of beauty and the emotional intensity of Renaissance art. The central theme of his paintings in the 1970s remained the human being, often his closest family (Jarmila, 1960, Jana with Jugs, 1965). He placed his figures in abstract landscapes lacking depth, which are themselves a metaphor for the curves of the human body or the vegetation unfolding into the depths of human eroticism (Lovers, 1969).

In the 1970s and 1980s, animals often appear in the paintings. Some of the motifs of the paintings are directly related to Podhrázský's drawings for the facade of the Litomyšl Castle (Girl with a Horse, 1976).

Restoration, frescoes In the 1950s, restoration of sgraffito plasterwork in Slovakia and southern Bohemia was a means of livelihood for Podhrázský. Here he applied his craftsmanship acquired at the painting school of the Vienna decorator E. Dvířka and the masonry experience gained from his father.

In 1973 he repaired the main portal and the riding hall of Litomyšl Castle with Zdeněk Palcr. The following year the conservationists decided to completely renovate the Renaissance façades of the castle. This required the completion of the missing and damaged renaissance sgraffiti and offered Podhrázský the opportunity to create entirely new large-scale drawings. that he personally gained a lot from this work and considered the fine ground of sgraffito plaster ideal for drawing. Here he applied his knowledge of renaissance painting as well as his own free invention. Podhrázský's work includes, for example, the entire reconstructed fabion cornice with lunettes, which was rebuilt after the baroque construction interventions were removed, as well as more than 90% of the mirror motifs of the newly created sgraffito patterns. The reconstructed Litomyšl Castle was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In 1977, Podhrázský and architect V. Pala realized fresco in the main hall of the mourning hall in Luhačovice. He created a series of stylized human faces on an area of 3 × 15 m. Other sgraffito designs (Le Murate, Florence, Old Town Hall, Prague) for arch. V. Rudiš were not realized.

Amateur films Podhrázský was interested in film at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, and together with Miloslav Chlupáč made slapstick films inspired by Charlie Chaplin. His first wife Olga Milotová and his classmate Josef Lehoučka starred in the film "Dear of the Seven Robbers". Other grotesques were filmed during winter stays in a cottage on Liščí hora in the Giant Mountains. They ironically inverted the tragedy of the 1950s in short situational scenes thematizing the struggle for bare life, with elements of black humour.

Collective 1957 Young Art / Creative Group Máj 57, Municipal House, Prague 1958/59 Art of Young Artists of Czechoslovakia 1958. Paintings and sculptures, Prague Castle Riding Hall, Brno House of Arts 1961 Máj Creative Group, Poděbrady 1964 Máj Creative Group, Nová síň Gallery, Prague 1965 5th Biennale Internazionale d'Arte Contemporanea della Repubblica di San Marino 1965 Object, Václav Špála Gallery, Prague 1965 Małarstwo a rzeźba z Pragi, Kraków 1966 Current Tendencies of Czech Art. Paintings, sculptures, graphics, Prague 1967 Mostra d'arte contemporanea cecoslovacca, Castello del Valentino, Turin 1967 Fantasy Aspects of Contemporary Czech Art, Regional Gallery of the Highlands in Jihlava, Václav Špála Gallery, Prague 1967 Painting 67. National Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, Moravian Museum of Arts and Crafts, Brno 1968 The Beginnings of a Generation, Václav Špála Gallery, Prague 1968 300 Painters, Sculptors, Graphic Artists of 5 Generations for 50 Years of the Republic, Prague 1969 Tschechische Malerei des 20. Jahrhunderts, Ausstellungsräume Berlin 12, Berlin 1969 Image 69. National Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, Moravian Museum of Decorative Arts, Brno 1978 Pittura céca contemporanea, Palazzo del Monte, Padua 1980 Zeitgenössische Kunst aus der Tschechoslowakei, Wessenberghaus, Konstanz 1983 Dessins tchèques du 20e siècle, Centre George Pompidou, Paris 1989 Restoration Art 1948-1988, Mánes, Prague 1992 Czech Fine Art 1960-1990, Central Bohemian Gallery, Exhibition Halls, Prague 1994 Focal Points of Rebirth, Municipal Library, Prague 1996 Art when time stood still, Czech Art Scene 1969-1985, Prague, Brno, Cheb 1999/2000 Art of Accelerated Time. Czech Art Scene 1958 - 1968, Prague, Cheb 2000/2001 100 + 1 art works of the Twentieth Century, House of the Black Mother of God, Prague 2004/06 The sixties from the collection of the Zlatá husa Gallery in Prague, Brno House of Arts, Karlovy Vary Art Gallery 2007 Máj 57 Group, Prague Castle, Imperial Stables, Prague 2010 Years in Days. Czech Art 1945-1957, Municipal Library, Prague 2012/2013 Verführung Freiheit: Kunst in Europa seit 1945, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin 2013 The Desire For Freedom: Arte in Europa dal 1945 (XXX mostra del Consiglio d’Europa), Palazzo Reale, Milan 2016/2017 Facing the Future: Art in Europe 1945-68, BOZAR - Palais des Beaux-Art / Paleis voor Schone Kunsten / Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, Karlsruhe, Moscow 2018 The Anatomy of a Leap into the Void: The Year 1968 and Art in Czechoslovakia, exhibition hall Masné krámy, Plzeň 2021 Confrontation 1960–1970, Moderna Gallery, Prague 2024 Heptameron: Surrealism and the Dream of the Renaissance, South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou