Kutnohorská gallery GASK prepared for its visitors in the period from March to August an author's exhibition of important representatives of Czech surrealism Eva and Ján Švankmajer under the name DISEGNO INTERNO. The exhibition dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the birth of Ján Švankmajer presents in its entirety all the artistic fields that the author dealt with, from drawings, collages, graphics, art objects, textile experiments to filmmaking. The work of Eva Švankmajerová is mainly represented here by painting, drawing and graphic work. According to the curator Richard Drury, the central theme of the exhibition is the so-called internal arrangement, i.e. the artist's pictorial understanding of the essence of the subject.
Jan Švankmajer was born on September 4, 1934 in Prague to a family of a window display arranger and a seamstress. In the years 1950 – 1954, he studied scenography at the Higher School of Art Industry under Professor Richard Lander. He later studied at the Academy of Performing Arts, where his classmates included, for example, the prominent Slovak film director Juraj Herz. Švankmajer's work can be divided into several thematic groups, which are also his main sources of inspiration. It is Rudolfinian mannerism, the baroque tradition of Czech puppeteers, art-brut, eroticism, then the art of natural nations (fetish), the work of the German painter Max Ernst or the work of world writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll. Ján Švankmajer's early drawings were influenced by the work of the Swiss painter Paul Klee, his objects from the first half of the 1960s can be formally classified as informal, but since the end of the 1960s the author has fully embraced surrealism. However, Švankmajer never described himself as an artist, because he perceived surrealism more as an attitude towards life than as art. He even refused the title of Meritorious Artist, the French order of Chevalier des arts et des letters or an award from President Václav Havel, because he considers the state a source of organized violence, a means of oppression and manipulation.
Eva Švankmajerová was born during the period of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on September 25, 1940 to a middle-class family in Kostelec nad Černými lesy. In the years 1954-58, she studied at the Priemyslová school of interior design under professors Václav Markup and Vladimír Landa. In the years 1958-1962, she continued her studies at the Puppetry Department of the Academy of Performing Arts under Professor Richard Lander. Her work is characterized by imaginative humor, drawing from women's magazines of the First Republic, from the absurdity of Stalinist poster propaganda or from the negative effects of modern civilization on the human being. Her lifelong theme was women's emancipation, which she started already in 1968-69, when she created one of her most famous works under the name Emancipation Cycle. She and her husband, Jan Švankmajer, met in 1960 when they worked together on a production of the Starry Heads of the Mask Theatre. They got married that year, and from 1970 they both became active members of the Surrealist group.
At the exhibition in the GASK gallery, visitors are greeted right at the entrance by bizarre portraits of the two main actors. They are the work of Eva Švankmajerová, recognizable by the naked female figures that form the contours of the faces of both artists. Right behind them, a magical world full of prehistoric monsters made of petrified rocks, faded animal bones, sea shells, mineralized rocks, forest cones, self-grown wood and other natural materials, from which Jan Švankmajer made his objects and collages, opens up. The exhibition forces you to perceive the space with all your senses, because in addition to the artistic expression, the visitor is also affected by a rich mixture of natural sounds, visual sensations, literary records and film projections directly on the gallery walls. At the first moment, a person solves the dilemma of what to focus on, but when he disconnects the rational analysis and lets himself drift freely in this surreal space, he will feel the incredible surge of creativity that is coming at him from all sides. Sometimes Švankmajer's objects seem rather eerie, as in the case of the African Puppet (2008), the Mineralized Baby Jesus (2013) or the Big Animal (2023). At other times, his work contains subtle irony and hidden humor, as in the Flying Chair from the film Silent Week in the House from 1969 or in Mineralized Magritte, a shoe-shaped object inspired by the famous Belgian surrealist from 2015. The most monumental work of the entire exhibition is the wooden Puppet Theater from the film Lekcia Faust, which in 1994 won a prize at the V International Film Festival Karlovy Vary. And perhaps the most famous wooden puppet is Otesánek from Švankmajer's film of the same name based on the book of tales by Karel Jaromír Erben, who was awarded up to ten Czech Lions in 2002. Eva Švankmajerová's paintings attract attention at first sight with their specific colors with a predominance of shades of blue, dark green and crimson, which she contrasts with the flesh color of the human figures. Right at the beginning of the exhibition is probably one of her most famous oils entitled Monkey Alki from 1966, resembling a female and male figure, probably inspired by the mutual relationship of both spouses, completed with monkey tails. The painter returns to the theme of inequality in the relationship between men and women several times, for example with the Portrait of the famous Dutch painter Rembrandt van Ryn and his lesser-known wife Saskia Rembrandt van Ryn from 1969-70. The 1980s are represented at the exhibition by works such as the Tenth House or Paracelsus' in 1983, where the figurative theme, apparently under the influence of time, is suppressed at the expense of abstract objects without contours, which would resemble human faces. Conversely, in the 1990s, human figures fully returned to Eva Švankmajerová's paintings, such as Ďakováčka, Krásny sloh or Oh those ozone holes from 1993 to 1995, but they were no longer a dominant element but rather only a supplement to the overall picture. From her late work comes the cycle of paintings Mutus Liber, which was created gradually between 1997 and 2004, i.e. just before the author's death in October 2005. But despite this premature departure, the Švankmajer family managed to create one of the most creative couples in the Czechoslovak art, theater and film context, and the exhibition in Kutná Hora is an obvious proof of that. Text and photo: Vladimír Dubeň