OLAF HANEL THERE AND BACK AGAIN
On 10 December, symbolically on Human Rights Day, the Kampa Museum has opened an exhibition of an artist who moved at the intersection of three art stories: official, underground and exile. Olaf Hanel (1943) was born in Prague and grew up in Světlá nad Sázavou. The Highlands later became an important venue for his land-art activities. He graduated from the Faculty of Education in Pardubice (1960-1965). In 1962 he met Jan Steklík and later Karel Nepraš. From the very beginning, he stayed in the circle of the most avant-garde community in Bohemia. An author of humorous cartoons and a member of The Crusaders´ School of Pure Humour Without Joke, he ran a gallery in Havlíčkův Brod in 1967-1971. After the cadre purges, he worked as a surveyor sensor, as a civilian employee of the Armádní film (Czechoslovakia´s Army Film studio, he measured water in a caravan for Geology Company. After the signing of Charta 77 he was a stoker in the children's hospital in Krč. In February 1979, he went to Canada via Austria as part of the operation condenamed Asanace or Clearance, a plan to force anti-Communists disidents to flee Czechoslovakia. In Canada he lived in Sherbrooke, Montreal and Toronto. He returned home in 1991 and worked as a curator at the Czech Museum of Fine Art in Husova Street in Prague. Happenings and performances were conceived by Olaf Hanel for his community. He was interested in the calendar, the events associated with it at the interface of myth, ritual and astronomical reality. He organized the largest fiery land-art work, the legendary Tribute to the Bright Stars (1972). As part of The Crusaders´ School, he realized patriotic trips: to Blaník and to the sources of the Vltava River (1975). The musical ensemble The Midsummer Night's Dream Band played on the
