Stratil Václav *1950

Untitled, 1975

oil on canvas, 49 × 58,5 cm, frame, signed. LN Va. Stratil 75.
The early painting with a double portrait from 1975 was created at the time when Václav Stratil was finishing his studies at the Department of Art Theory and Education at the University of Olomouc and held his first exhibition at the Podloubí Gallery. Stratil's figurative drawings and paintings at that time were shaped primarily by the teacher and artist Václav Zykmund, but also by the unofficial art and music community in Olomouc, to which Stratil eventually belonged and performed under the pseudonym HU HABA. The colourful figurative expressive paintings and muted drawings, tending towards a progressively abstracted and reduced character, were created in partial isolation from the artistic trends of the time, but at the same time anticipated Stratil's further direction. From the early 1980s onwards, Stratil worked in Prague, where he created a unique body of large black geometric drawings, contemplative and processual works, with which he established himself on the Czech art scene. In other multimedia work, including photographs, installations, performances, expressive paintings, primitive text paintings and conceptual works, Stratil emerges as a contemporary artist, reflecting, often with exaggeration and humour, the clichés associated with art and the identity of the artist.