Milan Dobes @ Olomouc Museum of Art - "A Celebration of Colour, Light and Movement" Exhibition - About the Artist + Artworks

Milan Dobeš 

A Celebration of Colour, Light and Movement

Olomouc Museum of Art

March 20 - September 7, 2025

Milan Dobeš 

Target, 1960

Vertical Lights, h 67 x w 51 cm

© Svetlik Art Foundation

Milan Dobeš  

Waves, 1960

Painting matt oil, sololite, 125 x 186 cm

© Svetlik Art Foundation

A retrospective exhibition of Milan Dobeš (*1929), a pioneer of global kinetic and constructivist art, will be presented by the Olomouc Museum of Art (Czechia). Visitors will gain a deep insight into the life and work of this artist, who exhibited alongside art icons such as Warhol, Vasarely, Anuszkiewicz, and many others. Through his creations, Dobeš transcended the borders of former Czechoslovakia and became a respected figure within the global avant-garde movement.

The path to becoming an internationally recognized artist was not easy for the native of Přerov (Czechia), who spent most of his ninety-five years life in Slovakia. While studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia (1951–1956), he faced challenges due to his "capitalist background" and was only able to continue his studies with the support of Professor Ján Mudroch. A pivotal moment and turning point in his career came with his three-month stay in France, which he was able to undertake by means of a sham marriage application. During this time, he came into contact with modern art while earning a living by painting street scenes.

Milan Dobeš 

Optical Relief – Triptych, 1964

Vertical Lights, h 67 x w 51 cm

© Závodný Gallery

Milan Dobeš 

Optical Relief, Untitled, 1964

Metal, mixed media. H 55,5 x W 43,5 cm

© Závodný Gallery

Milan Dobeš  

Pulsing Rhythm, 1965 

Glass, metal, electric motor, 61 x 77 x 297 cm

© Svetlik Art Foundation

Milan Dobeš 

Movement of Light in Space IV, 1968

Metal, electric motor, bulb, 78x 40x195 cm

© Svetlik Art Foundation

MILAN DOBES: FROM WENCESLAS SQUARE TO INTERNATIONAL FAME

In 1966, he received an invitation to exhibit at the House of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship in Prague, a bastion of socialist realism, which paradoxically became his breakthrough into the world of art. The exhibition of light and kinetic objects in the attractive space at Wenceslas Square, originally planned as a "protest action," attracted 56,000 visitors. It also caught the attention of prominent international theorists, including Frank Popper and Udo Kultermann, who recognized Dobeš as a key figure in kinetic art and op art. Frank Popper subsequently invited Dobeš to the Kunst–Licht–Kunst exhibition in Eindhoven, the first post-war exhibition of its kind in the world.

After that, Dobeš's works travelled to prestigious world exhibitions – Documenta 4 in Kassel (1968), EXPO '70 in Osaka, and the Biennale in Montevideo in 1969, where he received the First Prize for kinetic sculpture. Alongside Victor Vasarely, Andy Warhol, Edward Kienholz, and Martial Rayss, he was invited to Helsinki for the Ars 69 exhibition, which showcased sixty of the best contemporary artists from around the world. “I don't know how I got there, but I was there,” Milan Dobeš recalled nearly half a century later for a documentary film by the Olomouc Museum of Art. “And you know, it didn't strike me at the time at all. I thought I belonged there. In retrospect, I admire myself for I got there,” Milan Dobeš laughs as he reflects on those memories. His position among the key figures of global constructivism was affirmed in 2013 by his participation in the prestigious exhibition “Dynamo. A Century of Light and Movement in Art 1913-2013” at the Grand Palais in Paris, which recapped a century of kinetic art. From former Czechoslovakia, only František Kupka and Milan Dobeš were selected for this exhibition.

One of the highlights of Dobeš's career was his collaboration in 1971 with the American Wind Symphony Orchestra in the USA, where he contributed to the creation of a monumental light-kinetic object synchronized with the music of prominent composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki and Toshiro Mayuzumi.

Milan Dobeš 

Movement of Structure V, 1986

© Olomouc Museum of Art

Milan Dobeš  

Untitled, 1991

© Olomouc Museum of Art

Milan Dobeš 

The Great Rotation I, 1992

© Olomouc Museum of Art

MILAN DOBES: LIGHT, MOVEMENT, AND RHYTHM – A UNIQUE AESTHETIC

Milan Dobeš is like an equilibrist working with light and movement, he is the creator of precise op art graphics as well as extensive spatial kinetic objects. He is a refined illusionist and a colourful minimalist, whose rational approach results in works that astonishingly evoke emotional responses. Through his creations, he transforms the reality of space, drawing the viewers in with pulsating works that transport them to other worlds.

Among approximately 180 works, eighteen are by other significant global figures of constructivism and kineticism, allowing viewers to compare Dobeš's work with leading representatives in this field of visual art. “This is a unique opportunity to discover the work of an artist whose creations continue to resonate with both experts and the general public,” says curator Gina Renotière. “The exhibition was made possible due to the welcoming approach to loans from not only major state galleries but also private institutions and collectors,” explains Gina Renotière, noting that the exhibition will also feature objects and graphics from Dobeš's generous donation to the collection of the Olomouc Museum of Art.

Curators: Gina Renotière, Ivan Jančár

OLOMOUC MUSEUM OF ART

MUZEUM UMĚNÍ OLOMOUC

Denisova 47, 771 11, Olomouc 

www.muo.cz

Janet Malcolm: Free Associations, New collages series, at Lori Bookstein Fine Art, NYC

Janet Malcolm: Free Associations 
Lori Bookstein Fine Art, NYC
Through January 14, 2012

New collages by the artist JANET MALCOM are on view at Lori Bookstein Fine Art gallery in New York City. This series of collages titled Free Associations began to form in Janet Malcolm's mind when the papers of an émigré psychiatrist who practiced in New York in the late 1940's and 1950's —many of whose patients were themselves émigrés— came into her possession. The extracts from case studies appear in combination with fragments from early 20th century medical, surgical, astronomical and technological texts, as well as appropriations from contemporary art, giving these works the atmosphere of dreams in which vaguely and somewhat disturbingly familiar times and places are evoked. 

In Free Associations, Janet Malcolm continues her exploration of the aesthetic tradition of german painter Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) and the Russian Contructivists, but brings hints of narrative previously present to a new level of explicitness. The collages' source materials of yellowed handwritten and typewritten notes play the dual role of verbal signifier and visual element. The melancholy of once cutting-edge, now antiquated textbooks dovetails with that of the Freudian case studies—which, in Janet Malcolm's words, summon "a period in psychiatry that is as remote from today's practice as the manual typewriter is from the Macintosh computer." 

In a brochure which accompanies the exhibition, an essay by Hilton Als addresses the blurred line between the real and the imagined. He writes: 

Malcolm’s desire to order the world is not so much the desire to re-create or control it as it’s an exploration of its various elements—those moments of being that are no more, and that were as true and fake as anything else. Grief and fiction are the central themes of her collages; the grief is real, the images are made up out of the real stuff of grief, which is to say artifacts from the past, a desire to not let go, and are the visual representations of the will to remember even as time erodes that will, and we are no more. But that’s not entirely true. The others that come after us remember us as Malcolm remembers her dead, or the not-known-at-all, their various fictions and facts intact as they swim in the muddying waters of what we erroneously describe as the real world. Hilton ALS

Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York, NY, USA

Vladimir Tatlin Tower - Tony Shafrazi Gallery, NYC

Vladimir Tatlin: Monument to the Third International  

Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York 

Through July 30, 2011 

Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York

Poster for the exhibition 

Courtesy Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York 

Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument for the Third International, "the definitive paradigm of Constructivism" is exhibited for the first time in the United States at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, NYC. 

VLADIMIR TATLIN, the father of the Russian Constructivist movement, began work on the Monument in 1915 and completed his famous scale model of the colossal structure in 1920. Commonly known as "Tatlin’s Tower," the Monument, envisioned to function as the headquarters of the Communist International, was to stand in the birthplace of the Russian Revolution—the city of Petrograd. It was to be made from industrial materials—iron, glass, and steel—and stand 1300 feet, more than 300 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower or the approximate height of The Empire State Building. The ambitious engineering and architectural demands of the project, combined with political turmoil and steel shortages made it unrealistic for the massive structure to be realized.

VLADIMIR TATLIN'S TOWER AND MODEL OF MONUMENT FOR THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS - Tatlin’s Tower was exhibited in Petrograd in November 1920 and then in Moscow later that December on the occasion of the Soviet Congress. The model was erected a third time, in Tatlin’s absence, at the World Exhibition of Industrial and Decorative Art in Paris, 1925. The only other time that the model was installed during the artist’s lifetime was at the 1930 exhibition in Leningrad. By 1932, all traces of these models had disappeared.

The model of Monument for the Third International in Tony Shafrazi Gallery's exhibition is the first model to have been built after Tatlin’s death. In 1967, Pontus Hulten, Director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, having obtained permission from Aleksandra Korsakova, Tatlin’s widow, and consulting with T. M. Shapiro, Tatlin’s original collaborator, as well as two structural engineers, oversaw the fabrication of this model which made its debut in the exhibition Vladimir Tatlin at the Moderna Museet in 1968. Later the exhibition traveled to Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven and Technische Hochschule Delft, Holland in 1969, and many other important museums.

In 1979, this model was lent to the exhibition Moscow-Paris at the Centre Georges Pompidou. After the exhibition, the Pompidou had an exact replica made from this model for their collection, as our original model had been acquired by a private collector from Switzerland. In 1980, the Moderna Museet also made a replica from this model for their collection. Of these three versions of Monument for the Third International, the present sculpture is the only one created under the supervision of T.M. Shapiro, Tatlin’s original collaborator, and is the most accurate rendition of his original 1920 design.

Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument for the Third International is widely regarded as the defining symbol of Constructivist sculpture and architecture and remains one of the most celebrated icons of revolutionary art of the 20th century. 

TONY SHAFRAZI GALLERY, NYC 

www.tonyshafrazigallery.com

From Picasso to Basquiat at Institut Valencià d’Art Moderne IVAM

Exhibition:
Fire under the Ashes. From Picasso to Basquiat
Institut Valencià d’Art Modern IVAM
5 May - 28 August 2005

Curator: Kosme de Barañano

The exhibition is based on the review of primitive art, or children’s art, carried out by numerous artists since Surrealism, which shaped the iconography of avant-garde art, both in Europe and in America, with respect to the human figure, the face and graffiti, in Constructivism, Art Brut, Informalism and the legacy of Abstract Expressionism. The selection of works in the exhibition traces the evolution and development of that imagery – that fire – in modern art through the work of such acclaimed artists as Jean Dubuffet, Michel Haas, Germaine Richier, Gaston Chaissac, Pablo Picasso, Joaquín Torres-García and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The title of the exhibition comes from some words quoted by Jan Krugier when recalling a visit to Rothko: “Rothko struck me as having something shamanistic about him – there was a truth in him that he had to express. I remember going to see him once late at night in his studio in New York. And while I was looking at his paintings, he came out with a phrase that really struck me: ‘If you are looking for fire, you will find it beneath the ashes.’ Fashionable painters aren’t looking for fire. They simply make pictures, and that’s it. Rothko found this phrase in a book he had in the studio by Martin Buber. It’s a very beautiful expression and I think it sums up the role that shamans play. They find fire beneath the ashes. They rediscover our truth and transmit it to us. It is a message that has to be delivered, that is absolutely vital – because, without that fire, we are nothing.”

The exhibition seeks to present a recurrent option in twentieth-century painting and sculpture, the application of the supposedly naive mark, free of cultural roots. In these works, or rather in the poetics of these artists, the mechanisms of memory go back to prehistoric graffiti, to the icon. Despite the very different poetics of these artists, they have a common denominator: the primitive appearance of the mark, a schematic mark or blot. Among the artists whose work makes up this show – Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joaquín Torres-García, Jean Dubuffet, Gaston Chaissac, Michel Haas, Germaine Richier and Louis Soutter, the last two of whom have never been exhibited before in Spain – there are common features, but the vocabulary is different; each one has a different rhythmic tension or linear precision, a different concision and constructive power. There are differences of texture, colour, phrasing and expression in all of them.

In all of them there is an economy in the mixture of colours and an economy in the marks used. They simplify the subject or lay it bare so as to give it the value of an icon. Sometimes their works look like drawing because of their simplification, their economy of style. The proposal or experiment is to master the figure with a simple construction, not expressive or connotative but formalized. One can see the recollection of certain signs or aspects of how to synthesize reality in a new image which have reappeared again and again since the palaeolithic caves. Ranging from Picasso to Basquiat, the exhibition assembles these signs or graffiti which come from prehistory and from the imagination of children. This influence on twentieth-century art of drawings done by children or the insane appeared in the work of Paul Klee or Louis Soutter, but also in the first almanac produced by the group Der Blaue Reiter in 1912 there were children’s drawings, together with works of African and medieval art.

Jean Dubuffet (Le Havre, 1901 – Paris, 1985) belongs to a group of painters whose aim was to move away from the influence of tradition and explore unknown techniques in order to recapture the “ancestral spontaneity of the human hand when making marks”. His paintings of pure form, sometimes figurative, sometimes abstract, with bold colours and deliberate clumsiness, recall the expressions of the mentally ill and children, although this does not mean that their style is less elaborate. Dubuffet plays with clumsiness, doodles and raw matter in order to go back to the origins of art. In 1948, together with the writer André Breton and Antoni Tàpies, he created the Compagnie de l’Art Brut, which was a focus for the work of marginal individuals, an undertaking that sought to open up the art world for children and people marginalized by society. Often causing outrage with his deliberately childlike style, he sought to seduce, to celebrate deformity and materials that repel at first sight. An inventor and provoker of talent, Dubuffet succeeded in teaching how to look at the world from a new perspective.

The work of Michel Haas (1934) comes from most of the contemporary trends concerned with new figuration, such as the London School, Abstract Expressionism in America and free figuration in France. His paintings seem to belong to a time that is not ours, indicating traces of the art of cave painting or the corroded fragment of a fresco which bears the bruises of history. His technique is based on the use of simple materials such as water, charcoal and glue. His work has evolved from an initial fluidity and transparency to a form of relief which solidifies and inscribes his forms more profoundly in the thickness of the paper.

The early works of Germaine Richier (Grans, 1902 – Montpellier, 1959) are classical in appearance. During the war she devoted herself to making clay models of rather unattractive animals such as bats or toads, which she deformed so that they looked like unfinished creatures, somewhere between the birth of life and catastrophe. At the end of her career she made painted plasters and bronzes. Her work La sauterelle (The Locust), with a woman’s head, does not correspond to a facile Surrealism but places the act of art above the conventional world. After the war, her violent, refined, cruel contemporary sculpture revealed new expressive possibilities for figuration to Giacometti and many later sculptors.

In the early years of his activity Gaston Chaissac (Avallon, 1910 – La Roche-sur-Yon, 1964) felt the fascination of a vocabulary that emerged from prehistoric forms. In the forties his work was characterized by thick profiles in black ink, the use of light colours and isolated strokes of watercolour, presenting scenes that conjured up the imagination of the child. Chaissac was a member of the Compagnie de l’Art Brut created by Dubuffet in 1948 as an attempt to seek a new line of innovation which would escape from academic art and “fine art”. The concept of Art Brut was defined then as a new stage of art, distanced from traditional art and cultural influences.

The inclination for caricature and the grotesque of Pablo Picasso (Málaga, 1881 – Notre-Dame-de-Vie, 1973) and the sense of irony of which he himself was often a recurrent focus are revealed in the caricatures of the works of his youth, in which he animalized faces and portrayed salacious and scatological situations. The works presented in this exhibition show the importance of caricature in Picasso’s art and how that unprecedented cross between caricature, children’s drawings, primitivism and fragmentation of classical forms led to what has been called the “Picasso style”.

Joaquín Torres-García (Montevideo, 1874–1949) received a classical training. During the time that he spent in Paris (from 1926 to 1932) he joined leading European avant-garde movements which enabled him to develop the basis for an art that he caused to evolve in a very individual way. In 1930 he and Michel Seuphor founded the Cercle et Carré group. Although Torres-García quickly moved away from the members of the group, the pure abstraction principles of Neo-Plasticism enabled him to develop his personal style: a language based on a system of geometrical relationships and a repertoire of pictograms. His Universal Constructivism, dating from his time in Paris, was based on the assembly, on a metal grid, of universal symbols taken from ancient and modern cultures, including Pre-Hispanic cultures, in which he showed special interest.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (New York, 1960–1988) was associated with the punk movement and channelled his need for self-expression into designing jewellery and painting clothes which he then devoted himself to selling. In this way he gradually completed his training on a completely self-taught basis, inspired by Picasso, African art, jazz and children’s drawings. His pictures are full of enigmas and discrete symbols which can only be deciphered by those who knew him well. An examination of his work reveals the frequency with which he provides the possibility of escape by painting icons that refer to the primitive tradition inherited from his family, and it shows his predilection  or striking, almost garish colours, as extreme as his existence. Also read on this blog the post about  Basquiat’s works exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, 2005 -

The exhibition includes both paintings and sculptures by these artists, emphasizing the primitivism that underlies them all, making this show a visceral visual experience.

To accompany the show, the IVAM has published a catalogue, illustrated with colour reproductions of the items exhibited, together with texts by the curator of the exhibition, Kosme de Barañano, and the poets Jaime Siles and Guillermo Carnero.