The new exhibition will show flow of Time of Jozef Jankovič

NEWS | 12. 10. 2017

The great retrospective exhibition The Time Flower will present the visitors of the Museum of Modern Art in Olomouc a cross-section of one of the greatest stars of Czechoslovak and later Slovak art - the recently deceased Jozef Jankovich. At the exhibition people will see monumental sculptures of over-dimensioned human limbs, drawings, architectural projects and realizations in the field of computer graphics.

Jozef Jankovič has been one of the most distinguished personalities of Slovak fine art since the 1960s and has gained international recognition soon. But the Communist normalizers did not like the type of his engaging art. The way Jankovič understood the involvement shows the case with the sculptural group Victims warned from 1967-69 for the SNP Memorial in Banská Bystrica. According to the assignment, he was to create a sculpture on the theme of "victory," but arbitrarily changed it to a more "sacrifice". The bold representation of the vertical and horizontal penetration of human figures into a compact whole gave rise to a monumental piece that far outweighed its dimensions in the form of its actual realizations. In 1972, however, the Communists "cleaned up" the work and returned to Banska Bystrica in 2004.

In the seventies and eighties, Jankovič could not create monumental sculptures, so he devoted himself, for example, to jewelry or graphics. He can even be regarded as one of the pioneers of computer graphics in the Slovak environment, where he applied a distinctive manuscript of his sculpture.

Oversized limbs

Olomouc Jankovičs exhibition The Gone of Time follows up on the last years show of the same name in the Bratislava City Gallery, which made the audience his lifelong sculpture. Selection of works for the Olomouc Trojlodi was conceived by the author himself in front of his sudden death this summer. Visitors will see especially his work from the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. "It was a time to mold Jankovics personal art program and to respond to current European tendencies. For example, he came with a characteristic feature of over-dimensioned human limbs, which is still a very expressive and impressive message about individual and social demeanor of man, "Olga Staníková, curator of the Olomouc exhibition, said.

The Museum of Modern Art will also see the latest works illustrating authors creative thinking in later years when a grotesque came to the word in postmodernist morphology and gave a peculiar sense of the search for the freedom and absurdity of the situations. And there will be no other branches of Jankovičs work - drawing, computer graphics or architectural projects.

The Exploration of Time exhibition takes place under the auspices of Czech Minister of Culture Daniel Herman and Minister of Culture of the Slovak Republic Mark Maďarič.