Naděžda Plíšková (6 November 1934 Rozdělov u Kladna - 16 September 1999 Prague) was a Czech printmaker, painter, ceramist, author of sculptural objects and poet.
Life
Naděžda Plíšková studied graphic art at the Higher School of Arts and Crafts in Prague (1950-1954, prof. Jaroslav Vodrážka) and in 1954-1958 she studied graphic art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (prof. Vladimír Silovský). In 1958-1959 she took a scholarship at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (prof. Gerhard Kurt Miller), which she completed with a series of woodcuts for books by Karel Čapek. She was then accepted to study painting in the studio of Prof. Karel Souček at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she spent two more honorary years after graduation (1961) and passed the state exam (Prof. Jiří Kotalík).[1]
In addition to printmaking, she worked on ceramics, wrote poetry and socialised with artists and theoreticians from the Křižovnická School.[note 1] In 1964 she married the sculptor and printmaker Karel Nepraš. Their daughter Karolína Neprašová-Kračková is also an artist.
In 1968-1969 she completed a scholarship in Stuttgart and had an exhibition there with Jiří Balcar. Plíšková has returned to Czechoslovakia occupied by the Warsaw Pact troops. She was offered another scholarship by the Ford Foundation in November 1969, but was not allowed to go to the United States. After the birth of her daughter (1975) and with limited opportunity to exhibit, she devoted herself mainly to ex libris and writing poetry for samizdat editions. During normalization she had only a few exhibitions in small unofficial galleries.[2]
In 1982 she suffered a serious spinal cord injury, underwent surgery and a long convalescence. After returning from the hospital, in the suffocating atmosphere of the Husáknormalization, she almost resigned to her own work. In 1983, she wrote to Jindřich Chalupecký: "If you only knew how hard it is to get used to the fact that nobody counts on you anymore, and to watch averages, diligent averages, exhibiting, scheming and going merrily on".[3]
Plíšková has been a member of Association of Czech Graphic Artists Hollar since 1969. After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, she was a founding member of the free association Tolerance, but her artistic and literary work is clearly marked by her unhappy personal fate until the late 1990s.[note 2] She died in Prague on 16 September 1999.
Work
Literary work and illustrations
She published her poems and prose from the late 1950s and then especially in the 1970s in samizdat publications - Czech Expedition, Spektrum, Vokno, Revolver Revue, Lidové noviny, etc. The poetry collection Thirteen Poems (1982) was also published in samizdat. She is listed in the Toronto Dictionary of Czech Writers (1982).[4]
Some of these texts are included in the collection Plíšková by alphabet (1991). Poems and prose stylized as overheard monologues and restaurant speeches make up the book Pub Romanticism (1998). The poems collected in the volume Plíšková to Herself (2000) are mostly reflections on personal relationships, from motherhood and friends' parties to an increasingly strong perception of the loss of love, cruel loneliness, and reflections on the end of life. The posthumously published book contains works from 1997 to 1999, some texts not included in other publications and, in the editorial notes, a transcription of letters to Jindřich Chalupecký.[5]
A commentary on some of the author's life milestones is her interview with Andrej Stankovič in Revolver Revue No. 47 of 2001, which was published posthumously at her request.[note 3]
Quote
Naděžda Plíšková: S U N should shine more at night, there is enough light in the day-time anyway
Bibliography
Naděžda Plíšková: Plíšková by alphabet, Prologue by Jan Lopatka, Edition of Writing Artists, vol. 1, 121 p., Dandy Club, Prague 1991, ISBN 80-900352-4-8
Naděžda Plíšková, Pub Romanticism, New Line Edition, vol. 21, 83 p., Petrov, Brno 1998, ISBN 80-7227-034-6
Naděžda Plíšková: Plíšková to herself, Poetry edition, vol. 46, 253 p., Torst, Prague 2000, ISBN 80-7215-114-2
Illustrations
Klement Bochořák, Poems for big children, drawing on the cover, frontispiece by Naděžda Plíšková, Edition Czech Poems, vol. 233, Prague 1964
Michal Černík, A Life Deciphered, illustration: Naděžda Plíšková, Edition Czech Poems, Prague 1987
Petr Kovařík, Don't talk to me when I shave, illustration: Naděžda Plíšková, Mladá fronta, Prague 1990. ISBN 80-204-0168-7
Prints and drawings
Naděžda Plíšková already attracted attention with her bravura drawings and graphic sheets at group exhibitions of young artists in the early 1960s. Her work is still relevant today, although the subjects of her best-known works reflect the state of society before 1970. They show her penetrating intelligence, her lively sense of humour and sharp irony, as well as expressing the absurdity of specific life situations.
In her first drawings, she still refers to informel and the legacy of surrealism (Couple, 1963, The Jealous Beetle, 1966), but gradually concentrates on ironic reflection on contemporary themes (On the Subject of Caesar's Thumb, 1970).[6] Her work from the 1960s was permeated by the invention, hope and perhaps even naivety of a decade that has fundamentally influenced everything that has happened in art since.
The Fall of Icarus'', 1962
No title (Head), 1960s
Couple, 1963
Study I, 1964
Portrait of my husband (after marriage), ink drawing, 37x23 cm, 1964
Naďa Plíšková could probably be described as a successor to the Dadaists. Her graphic works have their own order, which is, however, prompted by the strange rules governing an absurd world where everything is turned upside down (Me, 1970). With her artistic virtuosity, she was able to elevate even banal subjects to a work of art and at the same time relativize the work itself by challenging its destruction (Little Erotic Box, 1973).[7] She had an amazing imagination, with which she was able to react with light exaggeration to the unquestionable values of the past (Mona Lisa, 1968; The Memory of Botticelli, 1968; Hieronymus Bosch's Dice, 1973) and to relativise everyday situations (Triptych, 1967). Plíšková reflected her position as a woman in the predominantly patriarchal society of banned artists and the underground in an original way, e.g. with sarcastic designs from the 1990s for her monument, or a graphic commentary on the promoted ideal of the perfect young female body (Re-stiching, 1968).
Dialogue, ink drawing, 42x59 cm, 1967
No comment, 1968
Ideal Sauce, 1968
Mona Lisa, dite La Joconda, 1968
Ugly Week, 1969
The mundane situations she observed and explored with analytical detachment may be reminiscent of Western European or American pop art (Ideal Sauce, 1968; Study for a Painting, 1968), with which she has been compared by most Czech and foreign critics. Plíšková created a distinctive variety of pop-art without sticking to any paradigm. However, she created its distinctive "European chamber equivalent",[8] without adhering to any models. Had she lived in the Western world, she would probably have naturally aligned herself with artists who responded to the consumer lifestyle with a sharp criticality and at the same time with a distinct sense of expressing the absurd. However, she managed to do the same at least within the local art scene, where she could draw on an environment that was conducive to a distinctive form of Czech Dadaism CzechDadaism (4 servings of tripe soup across the street, 1969; Proposal for a monument to Karel Nepraš, 1979)
Rather than consumerism, Plíšková thematized Czech beer culture (10 Gentlemen and 1 Lady, 1971) and portrayed symbols of socialist everyday life, marked by limited supply. She also ironized the proclaimed social security and a certain standard of living offered to citizens by the normalization regime in exchange for their resignation to dealing with public affairs (Knedlík základ rodiny / Dumpling the basis of the family, 1982).[9] According to Petr Rezek, Plíšková's work cannot be placed in the context of Pop Art, because its level of criticality and irony contradicts this classification.[10]
Shooting range (From the series Roses for Lidice), drypoint, 39×49,5 cm, 1975
Poem about a Dead Friend, drypoint, 65 x 49.5 cm, 1979
Proposal for a monument to Karel Nepraš, drypoint, 64x50 cm, 1979
Untitled, drypoint, 49,5x32,5 cm, 1981, 1981
No title, colour lithography, 42x51,5 cm, 1971
The Great Fatigue'', 1969–1970
Small Erotic Box (From the Erotiada Series), 1973
Kiss, combined technique, 1981
Naďa Plíšková worked in printmaking using traditional technical means (mostly drypoint and etching), but with an unconventional vision of reality. Jindřich Chalupecký describes her perception of reality as lyrical sarcasm. "Behind the sarcasm of her prints, all the more cruel because it is uttered with the impersonality of an objective protocol, there is a sensibility facing the barren banality of life."[11] Plíšková exchanged letters with Chalupecký, but she did not accept his sometimes almost mentoring attitude towards her own work or his interpretation of Marcel Duchamp's work as an androgynous artist. In her graphic sheet, for example, she ironized Duchamp's ready-made "Fountain" as Hommage á Karel Nepraš (1989).[12]
The same feeling of life is reflected in the objects in which she looks with detachment both at herself and at everything that was happening around her and that she had to cope with. At the time of the deepest social marasmus at the beginning of the 1980s, she created works full of bitter humour (Quadrangular Wheel, 1980; Beer Case, 1981), but by the early 1990s her work touches more and more on personal themes, and bitterness and loss of hope join the exaggeration in her texts and artworks (drawing At the Bottom, 1990; Monument for My Man, 1992; My Monument, 1997).
Hommage á K.N., From the Erotic year series, drypoint, 64,5x49,5 cm, 1989
Drawing, 34x43 cm, 1980s
Small Night Drawing, drawing with collage, 34x42 cm, 1984
Kiss III Gruppensex, drypoint, 34x17,5 cm, 1992,
School drawings and early works
Study of an old woman, pencil drawing, undated.jpg
^Dictionary of Czech writers : an attempt to reconstruct the history of Czech literature 1948-1979. Jiří Brabec et al., Sixty-Eight Publishers, Toronto 1982, ISBN 0-88781-128-0.
^The Křižovnická school of pure humour without jokes was an informal pub association of young artists, musicians and writers that met in the now defunct restaurant U Křižovníků in the Prague Old Town. Among its members were: the directors - draughtsman and author of conceptual actions Jan Steklík and sculptor Karel Nepraš, painters Zdeněk Beran, Rudolf Němec, Zbyšek Sion, Otakar Slavík, Antonín Tomalík, graphic artist Naděžda Plíšková, poet and conceptualist Eugen Brikcius, art theoreticians Věra Jirousová and Ivan Martin Jirous, experimental poets Josef Procházka and Vladimír Burda. For the members of Křižovnická school and their friends, collective action was a reliable form of defence. The works created at the time of the greatest flowering of this association, as if on the outskirts of general interest, are today among the values of Czech modern art.
^How to make a marriage:/ marry twenty-four years/ buy a cookbook/ learn to cook/ learn to understand/ learn to forgive/ and most importantly:/ learn to wait/ wait for everything:/ for a flat/ for a man/ for money/ for coal/ for a plumber/ for the 1st divorce stall, in: Jan H. Vitvar, How to make a marriage, Respekt, 9. 8. 2019
^When God says enough, I'd like to be home in bed... (Nikolaj Stankovič talks to Nadia Plíšková, February 1998), Revolver Revue No. 47, 2001, pp. 205–218
Sources
Monography
I, Naděžda Plíšková, text by Mariana Placáková, Museum Kampa - Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation, Prague 2019, ISBN 978-80-87344-49-1
Author catalogues (selection)
Naděžda Plíšková : graphic art, text by Oleg Sus, Ludmila Vachtová, Čs. spisovatel, Brno 1968
Naděžda Plíšková, text by Ivan Jirous, Art Centrum, Prague 1969
Naděžda Plíšková : prints, sculptures, drawings, introduction by Ivan Jirous, Gallery of Fine Arts, Havlíčkův Brod 1970
Naděžda Plíšková : prints - sculptures 1968-1970, text by Ivan Jirous., Union of Czechoslovak Visual Artists, Prague 1970
Naděžda Plíšková : drawings and prints, text by František Dvořák, photographs by Ivan Wurm, Jiří Hampl and the photographic workshop of the National Gallery, in: Regional Gallery of Fine Arts, Olomouc 1978
Naděžda Plíšková : prints - drawings - ex libris, text by František Šmejkal. Prague: Czech Fine Arts Fund, 1981
Naděžda Plíšková : drawings and prints, text by Jindřich Chalupecký, František Dvořák, František Šmejkal, Milan Weber, Ostrava 1982
Naděžda Plíšková : prints and objects, text by Naďa Řeháková, Regional Gallery in Liberec 1997
General monographs
Luboš Hlaváček, Contemporary graphics (II), Odeon, Prague 1978, pp. 68–69.
Genevieve Bénamou, L'art aujourd'hui en Tchécoslovaquie, 190 p., Genevieve Bénamou (ed.), Goussainville 1979
František Dvořák, Contemporary ex-libris, Odeon, Prague 1979, pp. 62–63.
Jindřich Marco, About graphic art : a book for collectors and art lovers, Mladá fronta, Prague 1981, pp. 107, 137, 335.
Jindřich Chalupecký, New Art in Bohemia, Edition Ars pictura, vol. 1., 173 p., H&H, Jinočany 1994, ISBN 80-85787-81-4.
Jiří Bouda et al., Czech Graphic Art of the 20th Century, introduction by Jiří Machalický, reprofoto by Roman Maleček, 325 p., Association of Czech Graphic Artists Hollar, Prague 1997, ISBN 80-902405-0-X.
Encyclopaedias, dictionaries
Dictionary of Czech writers : an attempt to reconstruct the history of Czech literature 1948–1979. Jiří Brabec (ed.) et al., Sixty-Eight Publishers, Toronto 1982, ISBN 0-88781-128-0
Dictionary of banned authors 1948–1980. Jiří Brabec, Jan Lopatka, Jiří Gruša, Petr Kabeš, Igor Hájek; index compiled by Aleš Zach, 349 p., Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, Prague 1991, ISBN 80-04-25417-9
SČUG Hollar 1917-1992 : contemporary graphics. František Dvořák et al., 128 p., Union of Czech Artists and Graphic Designers Hollar, Prague 1992, Text in English and German. Variant titles SČUG Hollar / SČUG Hollar 1917-1992 : contemporary graphic art / SČUG Hollar 1917-1992 : zeitgenössische Graphik.
Graphics : Pictorial Encyclopaedia of Czech Graphic Art of the Eighties, 255 p., Concept and introductory text by Simeona Hošková, Central European Gallery and Publishing House, Prague 1993 (Concurrent text and subtitle in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish), ISBN 80-901559-0-1
New encyclopedia of Czech visual arts. N-F. Ed. Anděla Horová (ed.), 623 p., Academia, Prague 1995, ISBN 80-200-0536-6
Dictionary of Czech and Slovak Visual Artists 1950–2003. XI. Pau-Pop. Alena Malá (ed.), 252 p., Chagall Art Centre, Ostrava 2003, ISBN 80-86171-16-7
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