Josef Zlamal - Private View

Josef Zlamal is one of the most promising Czech artists of the generation of the
1980s.
His elaborate drawings have been exhibited in the company of contemporary and
classic masters (e.g. Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Arnulf Rainer, Jiri Georg Dokoupil,
Slawomir Elsner or George Grosz) in leading museums for contemporary art - Power
Station of Art Shanghai. Recently, Zlamal’s work has been included in the collection of
Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig and can be seen in the permanent show of the
museum’s Old Masters Painting Collection (with Lucas Cranach or Hans Baldung Grien).
Some of Zlamal’s most significant works (essentially monumental triptychs) are
subsequently being acquired by premier private art collectors (i.e. COLLETT Prague |
Munich).
Josef Zlamal’s practice is characterised by an immediately recognisable visual language
that draws from diverse range of references and artistic influences including medieval
art (Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach) and expressionism (Otto Dix,
George Grosz, Alfred Kubin), silent cinema (Fritz Lang, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Sergei
Eisenstein) and literature (Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Thomas Bernhard, Karel Capek).
Zlamal’s primary material is hand-made paper and ink, nevertheless, the artist has
expanded his practice to encompass drawing on sculpture and objects, monumental
digital prints, installation and moving image. Zlamal's drawings are generated through
time-consuming layering (palimpsest) during the process of which the artist repeatedly
immerses the drawings into a water bath and washes them out. Part of the composition
disappears, but what is essential remains.
Josef Zlamal lives and works between London and Prague.