Pravoslav Sovák (1926–2022) is an artist whose presence and artistic merit has faded somewhat from the Czech public’s awareness due to his emigration to Switzerland where he lived and worked from the late 1960s. After his recent death, Pravoslav Sovák is remembered in this exhibition through a selection of works from his oeuvre as one of the most outstanding European graphic artists of his generation. During his lifetime he produced more than 330 graphic sheets in which he explored and developed the possibilities of the drypoint technique. Exhibited here are his works dating from the 1950s–1970s that constitute the core of Sovák’s intaglio printing experiments.
A native of Vysoké Mýto in eastern Bohemia,
Sovák took up artwork fairly late, in the mid-1950s. Although he had made his
first drawings, prints and paintings before then, it was only after moving to
Prague that he was able to fully focus on his artistic pursuits and begin to
systematically experiment with the drypoint and etching techniques. Initially, he
concentrated on the subject of cities that were more or less discernible within
geometric frameworks which over time expanded to fill up the space, while
gradually becoming more relaxed in form and concept. The early 1960s was a
period of experimentation for Sovák. In his works, more organic structures and
expressivity in building up forms emerged, often coming close to the contemporary
Art Informel trends. Yet even so, he did not renounce a strict geometric order
and began to juxtapose these two contradictory elements side by side, without
linking them up internally and leaving each their own radical expression. He
thus achieved a tangible tension in the individual prints, as is evident
especially in the Relationships and Contacts series.
After the mid-1960s, Sovák’s art began to
reflect his closer contact with the West where he exhibited more and more. His
visual language assumed greater freedom of expression and his experimentation
shifted from the exploration of the possibilities offered by the technique
towards a search for a new aesthetic. He started to incorporate concrete
motifs, figures and faces into the otherwise still abstract compositions,
executed as an integral part of the printing plate through the etching or
drypoint technique. In 1968, on the day the country was invaded by the Soviet
troops, Sovák defected from Czechoslovakia and emigrated to Switzerland via West
Germany. During this period, the polarity between constructiveness and
naturalism, which had previously been of crucial importance to the artist, became
less pronounced. Multi-layeredness was now the new attribute of his creations.
He worked up every sheet individually, at times even over the course of several
years; the graphic impression was for him only one of the numerous techniques he
used. Among his last works that were still based on the original principles, but
in which he embraced a new visual approach, were Friendly Desert, Player, and Hedges. These works
contemplated the theme of the desert landscape, which he had first addressed in
the early 1970s, perhaps in reaction to the exploration of the limits of human
freedom, horizons of life, and probably also a feeling of existential
loneliness.
The exceptionality of Pravoslav Sovák and
his oeuvre lies, most importantly, in his keen intuition for artistic conception
and construction. He honoured technique and craftsmanship, bringing his works
to the utmost perfection with cool precision, although oftentimes this involved
a tedious and technically challenging process. Sovák was not an artist of
gestures and romantic sentimentality, but rather of strict rationality and
objectivity. While at first glance this approach may seem to lack sufficient
fervour, its meaning arises from profound depths as well as his quest for
dispassionate topicality and veracity.
Graphic Arts Cabinet, Trade Fair Palace
Curator: Anna Strnadlová
Graphic Arts Cabinet, Trade Fair Palace
Curator: Anna Strnadlová
