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Vladimír Boudník |
Vladimír Boudník is undeniably the most significant personality of Czech post-war Abstract Art. His life, his approach to art and his work are similarly interlinked as in the case of Joseph Beuys. Albeit autodidact, he strongly influenced an entire generation of young artists of the late 1950s and early 1960s. And even though Boudník, who was perceived in the Czech reality of that period more like an oddity, broke his way through to the international artistic scene, he has never been properly “discovered”. When he got access to information about world art thanks to his more educated friends (Hrabal, Kolář and others), he was necessarily surprised that he made the same discoveries in the same time as the American artist in the field of action painting, Jackson Pollock. Boudník labeled his complex interpretation of art work, which he presented by his two manifests as early as in 1949, Explosionalism. It was based on his conviction that art is an inseparable part of life, that people shall employ their imagination in the widest extent possible, and the more strongly to experience every single moment, every situation. This is why he often set out to the streets to demonstrate this possibility to people and to fulfill his vision in a positive way. Theoreticians therefore call him the direct predecessor of Action Art which he employed in the streets on the examples of associative completing stains on the walls as well as in his experimental prints in which he spontaneously used all possible scraps from the factory where he worked, along with his own blood and sperm. The image of Boudník as conspicuous artist and innovator, pioneer of Czech post-war Abstraction and Action Art was, paradoxically, misrepresented by writer Bohumil Hrabal who created a legend in Boudník’s literary figure of Vladimírek (The Tender Barbarian). Boudník was positively the first Czech artist to work with the principles of accident which are, in Czech lands, rather linked with Constructivist tendencies. This spontaneous activity combined with strong sense of refined aesthetic is apparent in all his abstract prints. Vladimír Boudník trained as a toolmaker, was displaced to the German city of Dortmund during the war, and wrote poems and peace manifestos. In 1949 he formulated the manifest “Art – Explosionalism” one of whose main principles was spontaneous life as art. Boudník worked as a manual laborer for most of his life and his art was inspired by the immediate surroundings of his factory. He created his prints in an impulsive way, employing various components and spare parts, metal scrap, imprints, effects of magnets. He laid the parts directly on the surface of sheet metal from which he printed. Each print was a discovery, each one was an adventure co-created by life itself. Boudník also collaborated on therapies with a psychiatric clinic, and even created a cycle of Rorschach tests for it. Although he did not exhibit too often, he was one of the artists participating at the 1958 Expo in Brussels and also appeared in the Museum of Modern Art in Miami in 1963. He died tragically in December 1968.
