Michal Novotný is both painter and sculptor and it is difficult to say which comes first. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, specialising in several fields, and this experience provided him a sound training for his future career (he studied with Nepraš, Načeradský and Jiří David). He himself says that sometimes he paints “sculptural pictures” representing the sculptures he would like to create one day. At the same time, however, his pictures are a kind of “surreal” vision of what cannot be captured in the form of a sculpture. In his work both media complement each other.

Novotný’s pictures often take the form of puzzles (besides which the artist himself shrouds his work in secrecy merely by virtue of presenting it under the pseudonym MICL). They often portray common objects (boards, palms, melons, lemons, carrot, “grass”, cars, nuts and bolts, buckets, cows, swans ...), and the combination thereof might remind one of Lautréamont’s encounter between the “the sewing machine and an umbrella on the operating table”. This tendency to a kind of dreamlike atmosphere contains an element of almost Magritte-like surrealism, while also reminding us of the work of Milan Kunc, characterised by a pop-art and absurd combination of ordinary objects within the context of the contemporary world. Some of Novotný’s pictures represent phantasmagorical landscapes reminiscent of the fauna and scenery from the famous Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster Avatar (though they were painted several years previously), while others are more like a lunar landscape.

However, most characteristic of Novotný’s work are his “board paintings”: pieces of wooden construction float against the background of a blue sky, leading from some unknown place somewhere unknown (all the way to heaven perhaps?). In these paintings “boards are a morphological constant, a basic authority on which not only the composition of the image can be based, but the whole of human life. Boards here are not a fata morgana, but reality itself and the basis of life, natural authority and part of the artistic personality,” as Vlasta Čiháková-Noshiro says.

In the field of sculpture Michal Novotný is one of the few artists to struggle with classical statutory and the figure. Most artists, if they want their work to be seen as innovative, would rather avoid this sphere. Novotný is a sculptor for whom traditional materials like stone and wood are still important materials. “In terms of statues I prefer that magic where the sculpture resembles a soft, living being, while being created from some truly hard material.”

Novotný’s pictures often depict a vision of sculptures and his recent smaller sculptures made of resin (which is faster to work with than stone, as he says) are again direct quotations of the heterogeneous, surreal schizophrenic beings from the pictures. Certain themes are intertwined. For instance, in the pictures one of the main motifs is a ladder going up into the sky. This is a symbol of the human desire to ascend, but also a symbol of Jacob’s ladder from the Bible, the linkage of two different worlds. And it is this theme which is embodied in three-dimensional form in what is Novotný’s most impressive sculpture to date, Those Ahead of Us, which is installed in a public place.

1990-1997 Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (J. Načeradský, K. Nepraš)
1983-1986 wood modelling, ČKD Blansko

Scholarship:
1996 Ecole des Beaux Arts, Aix-en-Provence, France

Participation in symposia:
2006 Cheb
2003 Třinec
2001 Františkovy Lázně
2000 Lázně Lúčky, Slovensko
1998 Brněnská přehrada, Brno
1996 Kaankanpaa, Finsko

2009
Avalon, Galerie české plastiky, Praha

2007
Moře, Galerie Platinium, Brno
Eldorado , Galerie kritiků, Praha

2006
Sen sochy, Francouzský institut, Praha
Různé obrazy a sochy, Galerie Jídelna, Česká Lípa
Atlanťan, Klicperovo divadlo, Hradec Králové

2005
Táborák zvolna dohořívá, Muzeum Jílové u Prahy

2003
Galeryje 9, Brno

2002
Galerie Hvězda , Mariánské Lázně
Galerie Doubner, Praha

2001
Galerie Tvrdohlaví, Praha

2000
Galerie Doubner, Praha

1999
Sochařská galerie, Hořice

1998
Palác Akropolis, Praha
Dennsted Gallery, Vídeň

1997
Galerie na Bidýlku, Brno
Francouzský Institut, Praha

1996
Galerie AVU, Praha

1994
Galerie mladých, Brno

1993
Galerie Affa, Praha

1991
Moravská Galerie Brno
Moldau Gallery, Stockholm

2008
Fauna a flora, Tampere, Finsko

2007
Loď bláznů, Galerie kritiků, Praha
Typický obraz, Nová síň, Praha

2006
Příští stanice Arkadie, GVU Roudnice nad Labem

2005
Imprese, Galerie Rudolfinum , Praha

2004
Socha v zahradě, Botanická zahrada UK, Praha
Čistá krása, Galerie kritiků, Praha

2004
Bylo, nebylo, Galerie moderního umění, Hradec Králové

2003
16,5 sochy, Galerie UMPRUM, Praha

Art in architecture:
2007 Opona, Národní dům , New York
2005 Ti před námi, Brandýs nad Orlicí
2004 Interiér kavárny Spirála, Brno
2000 Velká Stříbrná Krysa – Obchodní dům Olympia, Brno
1999 Interiéry 4 – patrové diskotéky Karlovy Lázně, Praha
1995 Nástěnný reliéf - reprezentační prostory Atomové elektrárny Dukovany

private collections in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, Germany, United States

České ateliéry, Art CZ, v.o.s., Praha 2005, s. 410-415
Ivona Raimanová, V prostoru 2010, Generace 1989-2009, Spacium, Liberec 2009, s. 104-109
C&V Magazin 1, 2010, s.112-116