15/7 - 19/11 2023

Lubomír PŘIBYL: Retrospective

Lubomír Přibyl is a distinctive representative of constructivism in the Czech visual art scene, and this exhibition will be the largest and most comprehensive display of his work yet. Three years ago, he had a smaller exhibition in the museum’s “Stables” exhibition hall, focusing on works from the 1960s. This exhibition will show the continuity and inner tightness of Přibyl’s work across more than six decades. Although he has several hundred exhibitions at home and abroad, Přibyl’s work will be a discovery for the wider public. For most of his life, he was somewhat aloof from the domestic art scene. The consistency with which he continues to develop artistic approaches and design principles based on geometric abstraction and minimalism, is truly exceptional in the Czech context.

From stylized figurative paintings inspired by folk art, in the first half of the 1960s, Lubomír Přibyl worked his way up to geometric structures created with the help of nets and ropes stretched over plywood boards. He covers the resulting low reliefs with black oil paint or aluminum slices. Although they are strict monochromes, they have a very lively impression. The surface of the paintings is constantly changing depending on the angle of incidence of the light and the movement of the viewer in the exhibition space.

The second important part of Přibyl’s work is graphics. His graphic sheets copy the stylistic development of his paintings, but they emphasize even more the geometric and constructivist principles from which they are based. Since the beginning of the 1960s, Přibyl has had a number of successes at international graphics exhibitions with his large black and white prints, and in 2006 he became the laureate of the Vladimír Boudník Award, which is given as a lifetime achievement award.