Chatrný Dalibor 1925–2012

Thumbs, 1974

mixed media, canvas, 149 × 99 cm, signed on the reverse in pencil bottom left D. Chatrný 74
Space was an important lifelong element in Chatrný's work. theme that he returned to repeatedly at various stages of his creative life and related to it in various ways. At the turn of the 1960s the 1960s and 1970s, it was the spatial works with ropes that connected the surface of the painting with the outer space. Delineating, defining and creating spatial situations was realized by Chatrný in his own studio, or on unique exhibition occasions, such as the Eight Hour exhibition at the Brno House of Art in 1970, but also through drawing works in which he explored the possibilities of the aleatory situation of the line - cords in relation to given properties of space - this time in an interior scheme. These works were followed up in the early 1970s a series of conceptual drawing projects that thematized certain spatial situations and relationships, correlations of space, interiors, cubes, applying or going beyond the classical linear perspective. These conceptual projects, mostly realized only in the form of drawing or design, corresponded both to the international conceptual movement and to the the social situation in the then Czechoslovakia with the onset of normalization of the early 1970s, which made it difficult or completely limited the exhibition opportunities. For Chatrný, as for many other artists, the drawings and projects could represent a mental exercise and development of imagination, that were not bound by external constraints - they provided a free space. Many of these projects were published in small offset editions and sent to friends, artists and theorists who replaced exhibition re exhibitions of the works. Chatrný himself says: "The first projects were still feasible, the next ones allowed me to think much more freely: Correlation of Space, Spatial Deformations, Quasispaces, Corners, Ceiling Floors, Projects for room painters, later Mirror Orientations or Mirror Contexts, etc." In addition to the drawing projects entitled Traces in Space, Space or Traces Chatrný painted a parallel series of paintings that developed similar themes in the medium of painting. In 1973-1974, the artist painted several paintings with the same scheme of two identical architectural spatial intersections, with different imprints of one or two fingerprints that distort and disrupt the linear perspective of the scene by a different reality. The use of a life-size thumbprint or enlarged scale was repeatedly used by Chatrný in his work. According to Jiří Valoch, Chatrný related the fingerprint to himself, but also he was evaluating the visual and semantic quality of the trace of his own touch. In the case of the records of space, there was an intermingling of two different scales and realities-the silhouette of space and the surface impression, the geometric drawing and the performative bodily gesture. By entering the work, he was confirming Chatrný's own presence while connecting the real act of touch, thus connecting the outer and inner space of the work. By entering the work, he was affirming Chatrný's own presence while connecting the real act of touching with an illusory drawing, thus connecting the outer and inner space of the work. Dalibor Chatrný's artistic work has been evolving since the 1950s. century has developed in a plethora of creative approaches and chosen media from drawing, graphics, painting, objects, installations, photographic interpretations, projects that are difficult to classify in their many layers. Although it is extremely diverse, it remains at the core of its content coherent and integral. It undoubtedly reaches into the areas of conceptual art exploring the relationship between word or gesture and image, land art, experimental and abstract art, performance art, without in his work we can define their boundaries precisely. Connecting of Chatrný's work is the continuous creative invention and experimentation with various techniques and artistic expressions in order to visualize theoretical questions in the field of linguistics in a simple way, phenomenology or natural physical phenomena. Although the work of Dalibor Chatrný was mostly created in the local environment of Brno, in a closed space of the then Czechoslovakia, it corresponded in its character to the progressive and current tendencies of international artistic conceptual and minimalist scene and represented work of comparable quality. The original and authentic work of Dalibor Chatrný belongs to to the most significant values of Czech art of the second half of the 20th century, which is still awaiting its appropriate appretiation. Dalibor Chatrný (1925-2012), painter, conceptual artist and teacher studied from 1945 at the Prague Pedagogical Faculty of the University of Charles University and in 1949-1953 at the Academy of Fine Arts under Vladimír Sychra and Vladimír Silovský. He lived in Brno, where from the late 1950s He worked as a pedagogue at the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Brno in the 1990s. In the 90s he taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the BUT and the Janáček Academy Academy of Fine Arts. He was a member of several artistic groups, such as Profile 58, Parabola, Concretists Club and TT Club. He has received numerous awards, in the year 2000, such as the Michal Ranný Award for outstanding contribution to Czech Fine Arts, in 2007 the Ministry of Culture Award and in 2011 Artist has a prize. His works are represented in major institutional and private Czech and international collections.