Otakar Slavík’s Painterly Sweepings

The notebooks, as Slavík dubbed his diaries, were created as work and travel journals. Conveying his personal vision, they offer an intimate account of what art meant to him, what he believed in and what worlds he moved in. 

Though he was a trained artist, Slavík worked in a number of manual professions and only exhibited in the latter half of the 1960s. At that time his art received attention as part of the New Figuration movement. In the early 1970s he became close to artists from the Crusaders’ School of Pure Humour Without Jokes, whose absurd poetics appealed to him. He was one of the first signatories of Charter 77, resulting in his expulsion from the Creative Artists Foundation and subsequent forced emigration to Austria. He remained there until the early 1990s, when he began living alternately in Vienna and Prague.

The painter and his art and written works will be recalled by Dana Němcová and Duňa Slavíková.

Excerpts from the book will be read by Vojtěch Vondráček, while Hana Lundiaková Stinka will provide musical accompaniment.