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Precious metal

Low-tech retrospective reveals a national treasure
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
March 21st, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Figures begin to supplement the ornamentation in Kučerová's later pieces.
Alena Kučerová is a hidden treasure on the Czech art scene — which is a surprise, since she was receiving recognition abroad as early as the mid-1960s. An experimental graphic artist, she is unrivaled to this day in her ability to expand her uniquely complicated process of graphic art into works on tin-metal sheets that merge painting and sculptural object.
This retrospective, which brings together works from the late 1950s to the present, should finally bring her the local recognition that is long overdue.
Alena Kučerová: Retrospective

at Prague City Gallery–House at the Stone Bell
Ends April 29. Staroměstská nám. 13, Prague 1–Old Town. Open Tues.–Sun. 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

Kučerová was born in Prague in 1935 and graduated from VŠUP, the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, in the late 1950s. At the beginning of her career, she was highly inspired by the absurdist rhymes of the German poet Christian Morgenstern, and the first room of the exhibit shows her drawings for Morgenstern’s book Gallows Songs.
In those early works, Kučerová’s distinctive vision of drawing can already be seen in her repetitive use of fine lines and dots arranged in geometric forms. On some drawings in this series, there is the dense, obsessive detail commonly seen in Art Brut; in other drawings, the dots and lines create fine screens over and behind objects (as in Die beiden Flashen, 1959–61). She returned to Morgenstern’s poetry for inspiration in a series from the 1990s and another one done just a few years ago.
The early drawings in the first two rooms of the exhibition, however, reveal her to be just as interested in the works of draftsmen. She had her own way of reinterpreting draftsmanship, first and foremost with a fine use of dots and lines.
In the early 1960s, Kučerová began working with galvanized sheet metal, mostly because it was inexpensive. She quickly adopted this material into a process that would set her apart from her peers and define her work for decades to come: She extended the function of metal plates beyond being merely a material used in printmaking, altering them so that they became art objects in their own right.
Using shoemaking tools from her cobbler grandfather, she first perforated the sheet metal, creating a systematic sequence of dots and lines to produce shallow relief plates. Then she elaborated them with blind blocking (applying engraved letters or minimal ornamentation) to create luminous relief prints.
Other works from this same period are presented in three stages: first on a decoratively perforated metal sheet, then on a varnished metal plate using typical printer’s inks, and finally in relief prints of the image. Her metal sheets from the early to mid-1960s begin to reveal themselves as modified paintings or art objects, especially Wall 41 (1964) and the shiny GWCH (1967).
Kučerová’s selective and sparse use of color in her works is best appreciated in pieces like Magnificent Tuesday (1967), a fine reddish-yellow offset print that is subtle in color but fully blossoms in the room, contrasting sharply with the multitude of grays and blacks in her oeuvre. This piece is also outstanding on varnished, perforated sheet metal and wood, resembling simple, colorful Latin American folk art in its deep reds, yellows and blues.
From the second half of the 1960s through the ’70s and ’80s, Kučerová began a dialogue with figuration, creating perforated figures at rest and at play, especially swimming or bathing. The rooms dedicated to these works, with their contoured imagery of the sea, are soothing, as are the rooms dedicated to landscapes around the town of Stará Boleslav, on the river Labe (Elbe), where she has spent much of her life since childhood.
After the revolution, Kučerová moved to the countryside and discontinued printmaking. Since that time, her work has been characterized by framed assemblages incorporating twigs, branches, pencils, cardboard, nails, wood and sheet metal. The last rooms of this show are dedicated to the most recent phase of her career, and they include her most sublime works, such as Tendrils (1994–95), which consists of three plate surfaces with minimalist lines etched in, separated by thin branches and framed by thicker wooden branches.
There is nothing shocking in Kučerová’s work, which puts her clearly out of step with younger and more popular contemporary artists. But, for those who have grown weary of today’s art pranksters or for anyone who doesn’t normally think of graphic art as a medium for serious and startlingly original contemporary work, Alena Kučerová’s retrospective will be a revelatory experience.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (21/03/2007):

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