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Hidden Heritage. Visegrad Artists' Studios On-line
The Arton Foundation, together with partner institutions Moravská galerie v Brně (Czech Republic, www.moravska-galerie.cz), Technická univerzita v Košiciach (Slovakia, www.fu.tuke.sk), Trance Balance Kft (Hungary, www.acbgaleria.hu), is implementing the multi-year project Hidden Heritage. Online studios of artists from the Visegrad Group countries.
It is an important part of the Arton Foundation's long-term strategy. Many valuable works of art and important source materials created around 1960-1980 are kept by their creators in private apartments and studios, and are thus inaccessible to the public, researchers, and those interested in art. This results in an incomplete picture of postwar art, which we are still dealing with.
As part of the project, we are compiling and digitizing materials from the archives of Janina Wegrzynowska, Lujza Gecser, Jiří Valoch and Milan Adamčiak, among others. The materials will soon be available in the database www.forgottenheritage.eu
The project also allows us to look at the studios of female artists. These places have often played an important cultural role, and are now an important part of European heritage. We are trying to document them and make the collected information available in such a way that it creates a context for the developed archives.
Synopses of selected artists whose archives have been included in the project activities:.
Janina Węgrzynowska (1930-2010), Polish painter and graphic artist, member of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers, long-time contributor to the weekly "Argumenty" (1958-1975) and Polish Television (1975-1991). From 1949 to 1955, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1955 she received a diploma from the Painting Department in the studio of Prof. Eugeniusz Eibisch. She created paintings and spatial objects, using elements of op-art. Her works were presented several times at the Festival of Polish Contemporary Painting at the Castle of Pomeranian Dukes in Szczecin and at the Exhibition of Painting and Graphics of the Warsaw District of ZPAP at the Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw. In 1986, she had a solo exhibition at the BWA Gallery in Bialystok. In 2005, the Studio Gallery hosted an exhibition of her work along with a new laser project, "Drawing with Light," prepared in collaboration with the Laboratory of Laser Scenography and Special Lighting Effects at the Warsaw University of Technology. Her paintings are in the collection of Studio Gallery and Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok.
Janina Wegrzynowska wrote about her works: "My path in art has always been related to movement and light. Movement, which exists constantly in space, interacts with objects, as opposed to painting, which by its nature is static. I remember that when I left museums, I was always surprised by the contrast between the bustling street and the frozen figures in the paintings I was looking at. This feeling was thought-provoking, provoking the question of what painting by people caught up in the 20th century should look like. It was a challenge. To achieve this dynamism, I used meandering ribbons and various forms suggesting splatter in my collages from the 1960s."
Lujza Gecser (1943-1988) was one of the most original and radical representatives of Hungarian experimental textile art. She graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts in 1968.
Gecser became a key figure in the second generation of the Hungarian textile revival, which followed the 1968 Wall Hangings textile exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In addition to her involvement in a number of major national and international textile art shows, her work was frequently exhibited at the Szombathely Textile Biennial. Definitely breaking with the traditional format of textile art presentation, influenced by folk art, pre-Columbian art and macramé techniques, she began creating spatial art textiles in the mid-1970s. She continually explored the structure of fabric and its fibers, as well as the possibilities of using various new materials as textiles, such as fibers stiffened with gypsum and synthetic resin. The latter led to an exploration of synthetic materials.
She even became interested in film as a raw material for traditional textile techniques. In 1983, she turned again to traditional textile raw materials and ways of sculpting them.
Jiří Valoch (born 1946, Brno, lives in Ludíkov, Moravian Karst).
He has been working with visual poetry since 1964. He began by creating non-semantic and purely visual aesthetic structures, returning to semantic meaning from 1970, but with an extreme reduction of word content. From the late 1960s, he supplemented the medium of typewriting with new forms of expression - rarely used drawings, art books and photography.
He abandoned photography as a medium in 1975, in which year he also published his first monograph Poesia Visiva (in the Beniamino Carucci publishing house in Rome).
He participated in the Fluxus movement. In 1968 he organized the Computer Graphic exhibition, the fifth presentation of computer art in the world and the first in Eastern Europe. In the same year he participated in the New Tendencies movement in Zagreb.
Since 2002, he has been working as an independent curator, following the work of the then youngest generation of artists in the field of post-conceptual art and geometric abstraction.
Milan Adamčiak (1946 - 2017).
Slovak composer, cellist and musicologist; author of acoustic objects, installations and unconventional musical instruments. His work includes visual poetry, graphic scores, sound objects, action art, performance art, experimental compositions.
He graduated from the music school in Žilina (cello) and the Faculty of Philosophy at Comenius University in Bratislava, where he later taught. From 1972 to 1991, he worked at the Institute of Music Studies at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, researching 20th century music and the relationship between music and the visual arts.
He was active in various art groups, and in 1989 founded Transmusic comp. - An unconventional music ensemble. In 1990, he founded the Society of Unconventional Music and initiated FIT - Festival of Intermedia Creativity (Bratislava, 1991 and 1992). In 1990 he co-founded New Seriousness together with Július Koller and Peter Rónai.
It is an important part of the Arton Foundation's long-term strategy. Many valuable works of art and important source materials created around 1960-1980 are kept by their creators in private apartments and studios, and are thus inaccessible to the public, researchers, and those interested in art. This results in an incomplete picture of postwar art, which we are still dealing with.
As part of the project, we are compiling and digitizing materials from the archives of Janina Wegrzynowska, Lujza Gecser, Jiří Valoch and Milan Adamčiak, among others. The materials will soon be available in the database www.forgottenheritage.eu
The project also allows us to look at the studios of female artists. These places have often played an important cultural role, and are now an important part of European heritage. We are trying to document them and make the collected information available in such a way that it creates a context for the developed archives.
Synopses of selected artists whose archives have been included in the project activities:.
Janina Węgrzynowska (1930-2010), Polish painter and graphic artist, member of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers, long-time contributor to the weekly "Argumenty" (1958-1975) and Polish Television (1975-1991). From 1949 to 1955, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1955 she received a diploma from the Painting Department in the studio of Prof. Eugeniusz Eibisch. She created paintings and spatial objects, using elements of op-art. Her works were presented several times at the Festival of Polish Contemporary Painting at the Castle of Pomeranian Dukes in Szczecin and at the Exhibition of Painting and Graphics of the Warsaw District of ZPAP at the Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw. In 1986, she had a solo exhibition at the BWA Gallery in Bialystok. In 2005, the Studio Gallery hosted an exhibition of her work along with a new laser project, "Drawing with Light," prepared in collaboration with the Laboratory of Laser Scenography and Special Lighting Effects at the Warsaw University of Technology. Her paintings are in the collection of Studio Gallery and Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok.
Janina Wegrzynowska wrote about her works: "My path in art has always been related to movement and light. Movement, which exists constantly in space, interacts with objects, as opposed to painting, which by its nature is static. I remember that when I left museums, I was always surprised by the contrast between the bustling street and the frozen figures in the paintings I was looking at. This feeling was thought-provoking, provoking the question of what painting by people caught up in the 20th century should look like. It was a challenge. To achieve this dynamism, I used meandering ribbons and various forms suggesting splatter in my collages from the 1960s."
Lujza Gecser (1943-1988) was one of the most original and radical representatives of Hungarian experimental textile art. She graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts in 1968.
Gecser became a key figure in the second generation of the Hungarian textile revival, which followed the 1968 Wall Hangings textile exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In addition to her involvement in a number of major national and international textile art shows, her work was frequently exhibited at the Szombathely Textile Biennial. Definitely breaking with the traditional format of textile art presentation, influenced by folk art, pre-Columbian art and macramé techniques, she began creating spatial art textiles in the mid-1970s. She continually explored the structure of fabric and its fibers, as well as the possibilities of using various new materials as textiles, such as fibers stiffened with gypsum and synthetic resin. The latter led to an exploration of synthetic materials.
She even became interested in film as a raw material for traditional textile techniques. In 1983, she turned again to traditional textile raw materials and ways of sculpting them.
Jiří Valoch (born 1946, Brno, lives in Ludíkov, Moravian Karst).
He has been working with visual poetry since 1964. He began by creating non-semantic and purely visual aesthetic structures, returning to semantic meaning from 1970, but with an extreme reduction of word content. From the late 1960s, he supplemented the medium of typewriting with new forms of expression - rarely used drawings, art books and photography.
He abandoned photography as a medium in 1975, in which year he also published his first monograph Poesia Visiva (in the Beniamino Carucci publishing house in Rome).
He participated in the Fluxus movement. In 1968 he organized the Computer Graphic exhibition, the fifth presentation of computer art in the world and the first in Eastern Europe. In the same year he participated in the New Tendencies movement in Zagreb.
Since 2002, he has been working as an independent curator, following the work of the then youngest generation of artists in the field of post-conceptual art and geometric abstraction.
Milan Adamčiak (1946 - 2017).
Slovak composer, cellist and musicologist; author of acoustic objects, installations and unconventional musical instruments. His work includes visual poetry, graphic scores, sound objects, action art, performance art, experimental compositions.
He graduated from the music school in Žilina (cello) and the Faculty of Philosophy at Comenius University in Bratislava, where he later taught. From 1972 to 1991, he worked at the Institute of Music Studies at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, researching 20th century music and the relationship between music and the visual arts.
He was active in various art groups, and in 1989 founded Transmusic comp. - An unconventional music ensemble. In 1990, he founded the Society of Unconventional Music and initiated FIT - Festival of Intermedia Creativity (Bratislava, 1991 and 1992). In 1990 he co-founded New Seriousness together with Július Koller and Peter Rónai.
Lujza Gecser with her wall hangings at her solo exhibition, Attila József Cultural Centre, Budapest, 1972
acb Gallery, Research Lab
Lujza Gecser, Brigdes, 1975
Lujza Gecser, early 1970s
acb Gallery, Research Lab
Jiří Valoch at his studio, c. 1970
Jirí Valoch, My Art at My Home, 1972
Janina Węgrzynowska, Untitled, collage, c. 1960
Milan Adamciak - NOTY, graphic score, 1969-70
Technical University of Kosice
Janina Węgrzynowska, Untitled, collage, c. 1960
Fundacja Arton
Milan Adamciak - NOTY, graphic score, 1969-70
Technical University of Kosice
