Jan Dočekal | Václav Pajurek – guru of the group Stir up

Surrealism as the life attitude of artists and the way of their expression in the artistic and literary field originated in Paris one hundred and a year ago. André Breton and Philippe Soupault's book Magnetic Fields is the first significant work of the new movement in artistic history. At the same time, it is the first model of automatic writing. It was composed in 1919.

Last year Surrealism reached its 100th anniversary. This very important anniversary was attended by the whole surrealist world. He cried out in a single powerful voice: Surrealism is a hundred years old, still alive, the words of some art historians that Surrealism is a distant past are ridiculously mistaken.

The anniversary of Surrealism inspired two current exhibitions in the Czech Surrealist Gallery Devil's Tail. The first, mysterious Melody, is a showcase of works by Stir up members. In the background second, with the title Our Chaos is excellent and is constantly improving, is another anniversary. Kunsthistorik, painter and poet Václav Pajurek, spiritual leader of the Stir up group, celebrated his 75th birthday. Author's exhibition, whose title spoke on Our Chaos… was a tribute to the jubilant.

Václav Pajurek belongs to the third generation of Czech surrealists. His journey of overrealistic thinking and manifestations began in the 1960s with the co-founding of the Lacoste Group, active from 1964 to 1972. Lacoste members - Arnošt Budík, Jiří Havlíček, Josef Kremláček and Václav Pajurek - have been registered by the Brussels International Association since 1965, whose designations were recorded and highlighted by the history of modern art: the Center International de l'actualité fantastique et magique. The four surrealists from the Lacoste group were short but very important members of the Brussels Center to participate in the most important European events in the field of supra-realism of the time.

In 1972, the Lacoste group was destroyed by political and social changes. In Czechoslovakia, all forms of free creative work and contacts with Western countries have been destroyed. Václav Pajurek contributed significantly to the publication of the samizdat surrealist Styx. At the beginning of the third millennium, this proceedings replaced a new proceedings called Styxus. It is published irregularly by the group Stir up under the guarantee of a Czech book publisher called Amaprint.

After November 1989, Pajurek is a member of the Czech Karel Teiga Society. In 1995 he is a founding member of the Stir up group. In the paintings from recent years, exhibited in the gallery Devil's Tail at Pajurek's jubilee, we have seen both the typical tendencies of surrealism - veristical and absolute. The first one draws on concrete ideas of a dreamy or fantasy character. In the second, the principle of automation is usually predominant. This second principle expects the artist to find surprising paintings whose starting point is largely coincidence. Pajurek's paintings, gathered under the stretched wings of imagination, are recognized as colorfully cultivated designs of themes, as testimonies of marvelous events that have their starting points in the artist's inner world. In particular, they are clear manifestations of the attitude of life, which has been a sign of Pajurek's relationship to the realities of the world for five and a half decades. From the artist's intended relationship to the universe and everyday life, paintings are born whose signs are instinct. The painter's surrealistic nerve is a mediator of extraordinary events presented by extraordinary artistic means, as the arsenal of free surrealistic struggle without blood, with harsh poetry, and with an overlap of human desire.

 The curator Lubomír Kerndl spoke at the opening of the Václav Pajurek exhibition. He also said this: Chaos is a counterpart to rationality and logic. It guarantees a great deal of freedom of thought and expression… As old wisdom says, order is for the wise, a clever man is the ruler of chaos.

Pajurek likes different ways of experimenting. These include unconventional image formats. He experiments on classically smooth pictorial surfaces, and also on surfaces that give the impression of unstable motion. It is achieved by irregularity, tearing down a flat shape, a system of strange (surrealistic) structures made of canvas and colors.

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Agulha Revista de Cultura

UMA AGULHA NO MUNDO INTEIRO

Número 149 | Janeiro de 2020

Artista convidado: Lubomír Kerndl (República Checa, 1954)

Editor convidado: Jan Dočekal

Número especial dedicado ao Surrealismo na República Checa

editor geral | FLORIANO MARTINS | floriano.agulha@gmail.com

editor assistente | MÁRCIO SIMÕES | mxsimoes@hotmail.com

logo & design | FLORIANO MARTINS

revisão de textos & difusão | FLORIANO MARTINS | MÁRCIO SIMÕES

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