Brazda PDF

PAVEL
BRÁZDA
Five Minutes Before the End of the World
(1945–1966) chalk and ink drawing on paper 63 x 136 cm¨
Did You Forget to Shave?

(1950) oil on board 37 x 30 cm
The Monster Is Waiting, the Monster Has Time

(1950) oil on board 78 x 44 cm
“THE MONSTER IS
WAITING, THE MON-
STER HAS TIME”
1956-58
“RACERS” 1956-58
Oil on canvas
Grey Figure
(1957) watercolor on paper 38 x 20 cm
“Silver Astronaut”
(1957) watercolor on board 45 x 18 cm
“ASTRONAUTS” 1956-58
Acrylic on canvas
“HEADS” 1956-58
Computer painting / Digital print on paper or canvas
“HUMAN COMEDY” 2000- PRESENT

“HUMAN COMEDY” 2005- PRESENT
Computer painting / Digital print on paper or canvas
PAVEL BRÁZDA
Pavel Brázda (born 1926) is one of the most remarkable

solitaires in Czech postwar art. As early as 1943 he founded his
own movement, called “Hominism”, which he defined as art about
people and for people. In 1949 he was expelled along with the
painter Věra Nováková from the Prague Academy of Fine Arts for
political reasons, and subsequently he had to apprentice as a house
painter. From 1950 to 1952, now as a married couple, Brázda and
Nováková attended the Higher School of Applied Arts, and both
were then allowed to earn a living in the applied arts to a limited
degree. For 10 years starting in 1977 Brázda was a stoker in a coke
boiler room, and since 1987 he has been a pensioner.
His nonconformist work was hidden from public view for 40

years, and only after the Velvet Revolution was it “discovered”
when he and his wife jointly had their first major exhibition in
1992. In recent years he has been adding to his extensive body of on the brutally absurd realities of the civilization in which he
visual art a group of literary texts marked by irony and self-irony. lives.”* In 1954 he painted the visionary cycle “Astronauts”
Paradoxically, long-term exclusion from the public sphere allowed — figures, half human, half robot, wearing spacesuits. It was
him to take a lifelong nonconformist stance and to create with just at that time that his style began to change: He moved
a sense of freedom and inner independence. His work from the from a faithful naturalism to symbolism, often with elements
1940s and ’50s is characterized by the startlingly bold departure of graphical ornament. It was in this spirit that he created, for
through which he distanced himself from the artistic mainstream example, his cycle of cheerful and brightly coloured “Racers”.
of the time and even anticipated some of the essential features of But there is also the sting of irony here: Racers symbolize
Postmodernism by several decades. His views were in part close to vitality and energy and at the same time the futility of a “fast”
Surrealism, but at the same time he was looking into the distant consumerist way of life. In these graphically stylized works
past with veneration for such Old Masters as Lucas Cranach. His he also found a point of departure for his current work, a
drawing method is based on the example and teachings of the large “novel in pictures” called “The Human Comedy”. It is
classics of Late Gothic and Early Renaissance art, including Albrecht in a clearly readable, understandable, simplified, grotesquely
Dürer and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. symbolic style, partly mediated with digital technology, in
which everything that is unnecessary — including colour —
From his earliest creative work Brázda has dealt primarily with is eliminated and reduced to symbol and intimation. There
critically analysing the image of the world while maintaining remains only a strong basic line, contour or contrasting colour
his characteristic humorous outlook. The socially oriented on a monochromatic or at most two-colour background.
“Hoministic” paintings and drawings from the 1950s can be
described as a visionary statement about the human psyche “Brázda does not go against current trends in visual art, nor
against the backdrop of the time. Brázda enjoys working with against the trends of any period, except those that are too
the device of microscopic “up-close seeing”, as in the paintings fashionable or academic. He prefers to remain on the outside. If
The Monster Is Waiting, the Monster Has Time and Did You he concurs with them in some way he welcomes it, if he diverges
Forget to Shave? (1950), which are bizarrely introspective with with them it doesn’t bother him at all. Since the beginning
numerous symbolic meanings and levels. The absurdity of the he has remained and will continue to remain sufficiently free
very origin of our world is one of the unifying themes threading and independent. There is not much, but also not little, in
in an uncustomary consistency through his entire body of work. contemporary art (mainly figurative, but also abstract) that he
In his output one also can note an affinity with literary texts by values as lively and useful, whether it is somewhat close to him
Samuel Beckett, Dostoevsky and Orwell. A philosophical overlay personally or remote. About the crucial present and future of
is also evident from the titles of his paintings. painting, compared with other modes of art that would replace
it and sometimes even try to unseat it, he remains confident
One of the most important works of this period is a tragicomic (…). Brázda is above all a sympathetic observer of his own life
painting of the apocalypse titled Five Minutes Before the End of and the lives of others. Generally, the human situations and
the World (1945–1966). In it we are standing before a bewitching stories in his paintings transcend time in content and form.”**
reflection of the full breadth of human intellectual existence
“from the terrible to idealism”, in the words of the artist. Miroslav Ambroz
“Brázda’s sharp vision acts here as an imaginary magnifying
* Richard Drury: Z lidské komedie (From the Human Comedy), 2009
glass, which he focuses both on his own intimate life and also ** Přemysl Orátor: O malíři Pavlu Brázdovi (On the Painter Pavel Brázda)

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PAVEL

Did You Forget to Shave?

The Monster Is Waiting, the Monster Has Time

“HUMAN COMEDY” 2000- PRESENT

Pavel Brázda (born 1926) is one of the most remarkable

His nonconformist work was hidden from public view for 40

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