Jiří Hilmar / Anonymous Form of the Square
Fait Gallery
25. 10. 2023 – 13. 1. 2024
Opening: 25. 10. 2023, 7 p.m.
Curator: Denisa Kujelová
Jiří Hilmar worked for more than 40 years in the Federal Republic of Germany where he emigrated in 1969, and so his oeuvre remains virtually unknown to the general public. The retrospective in the Fait Gallery is the artist's most extensive exhibition to date, and aims to set this record straight.
For Jiří Hilmar, as a protagonist of Concretism whose club he co-founded in Czechoslovakia in 1967, the activation of the viewer and his or her procedural perception in motion was essential in a substantial part of his work. In an interview in 2012, the artist said of the square format, which appears in most of the works and in the title of the current exhibition, "All optical reliefs are built on the plan of the square. For me, it is an anonymous format that has its own stability and in which I can move with complete freedom. It has the same diagonals, four right angles, no tension in the side ratio." In addition to paper reliefs folded into optical structures, the artist's retrospective will also show monochromes of layered tracing paper created in parallel, as well as later works manifesting an increased interest in environmental issues dominated by works of natural materials, among which wood came to prevail in the last phase.
Jiří Hilmar (*1937) was born in Hradec Králové, graduated from the Secondary School of Interior Design in Prague under Prof. Richard Pipal. After his first exhibition in the Fronta Gallery in Prague (1967) he had numerous so;o shows, for example, in the Heseler Gallery in Munich (1969), Arte Centro in Milan (1972), Walter Storms Gallery in Munich (1977 and 1980), Galerie Mathieu in Besançon (1979), Paris Art Center (1988), the Opatov Gallery in Prague (1991), the House of Arts in České Budějovice (1999), the Kampa Museum in Prague (2015) and the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové (2020). His works have been part of collective exhibitions in the Regional Gallery of the Highlands in Jihlava (1968), Denise René Hans Mayer Gallery in Düsseldorf, Kunstverein München, Institut für moderne Kunst Nürnberg and the National Gallery in Prague. Apart from the Concretists’ Club, which he co-founded in 1967, he was active in the art groups Gerade - Künstler Siedlung Halfmannshof Gelsenkirchen, the art groups Other Geometry and the Czech Exile. The work of Jiří Hilmar is represented in the National Gallery in Prague, the Slovak National Gallery, the Benedikt Rejt Gallery in Louny, the Museum of Art in Olomouc, the Museum Bochum, the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, the Lenbachhaus München, the Kampa Museum - Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation, the Fait Gallery and many other private collections.
Presskit najdete zde: https://bit.ly/3rHJGea
Kontakt pro média:
Viktorie Chomaničová
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www.faitgallery.com