Mikuláš Medek

Bohumir Mráz (1930-2001, Czech art historian and writer)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the 1970s

Bochum, Museum Bochum, Mikuláš Medek 1926-1974, 1976-77, no. 16
Prague, National Gallery, Mikuláš Medek: Malirske Dilo 1942-1974, 1990, illustrated in the catalogue
Prague, Galerie Rudolfinum, Mikuláš Medek, 2002, illustrated in the catalogue

Bohumir Mráz, Mikuláš Medek, Prague, 1970, no. 80, illustrated, p. 55, discussed

The canvas has not been lined. Ultra-violet light reveals no visible sign of restoration. Colours are strong and vibrant and the picture is in very good original condition. Presented in a narrow black frame.
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Painted in 1967, Three Events was the culmination of a cycle of paintings titled The Guest without a Host.  Its execution date coincided with Medek’s first one-man exhibition abroad at La Bertesca Gallery in Genoa.

For Medek, the art that was most suitable to answer the problems of modern man in a modern world was surrealism. A great admirer of the poetic surrealist works of Toyen and Max Ernst, Medek developed his own unique style of abstract surrealism.  This involved placing organic forms – usually botanical or biological – and abstract elements accentuated by their colour structures onto a canvas that was prepared with oil paint and synthetic enamel. Within these compositions the coloured matter, its luminosity and surface structure became in itself the object to be depicted. These works became known as the ‚Prepared Paintings cycle‘.

In the 1950s, the Czech state sought to expunge modern art and thought. Artists painted only for themselves as they were not allowed to exhibit publicly, and communication with artists abroad was prohibited. By using synthetic enamel in his paintings, Medek deliberately choose a thoroughly modern medium as both subject matter and expressive means in his paintings. Medek treated the paint as a living matter, lacerating and scratching it with spatula, knife, fingernails and a sharp brush. The artist's intricate technique involved superimposing several layers of paint. 'The basic essentiality of Medek’s work (...) does perfect justice to the conception of a structural painting; it is a structure in the real sense of the word, an organism created in space and time, a structure of both significance and technique. His coloured structure does not merely lie on the canvas surface, but is the result of the whole creative process of painting in layers' (B. Mraz, Mikuláš Medek, 1970, p. 45).

In 1963 Medek had the first opportunity to exhibit a large number of his works publicly in Telepice. In the introduction to the catalogue he wrote: 'A painting is a kind of sensitive surface touched by a psychic event that, continuing the process of movement, leaves behind it an objective report of its existence within a system of tracks and impressions' (quoted in Mraz, 1970, p. 44).