“There exists something like an art industry. This includes galleries, museums, souvenir shops and work in public spaces. Public space usually has nothing in common with art, i.e. sculpture, painting, spatial design, or if so then only its degraded form, and so few culture vultures are interested in it. I enjoy working with this poorly treated topic, which was the main topic throughout history. Despite the difficulties caused by the rise of socialist, communist and early capitalist society, something got done here and there, though the public rarely knows anything about public matters. And so I decided to release my public projects on the ground floor of the school where for 20 years I have been striving to instill good public art into the minds of the New Generation.“ (Kurt Gebauer)
Kurt Gebauer was born in 1941 in Hradec nad Moravicí. After attending the School of Art and Crafts in Brno he graduated from the Stonemasonry School in Hořice. From 1963 to 1969 he studied with Professors Makovský and Lidický at the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU), Prague. He often thinks back to his short study trip to the César Studio at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1972, which represented a unique opportunity to leave Czechoslovakia and compare his output with world art.
After graduating from AVU he created his first sewn figures. These are Female Swimmers and Strong-Minded Bull Terrier. Later came Enlarged Parrot and a stuffed figure of his own wife Libuš, which he made in solitude in Stradonice u Berouna. Here he examined and documented the creative work of his son Jan Mikuláš, founded his own Gebauer State, and created other marginal works.
From 1980 to 1985 he worked Minikrajina (Mini-landscape) in Ostrava, an environmental playground in Fifejdy, which still remains a case study in how to work effectively with a surface area of 1.5 hectares with minimal resources. There followed Prague-based spatial projects entitled Fish Point in Stodůlky, Monsters in Dědina, and Gazebo (co-designed by Karel Nepraš) in Malešice.
The Lesser Quarter Courtyards was an important event. In 1981, along with Magdalena Jetelová, Ivan Kafka, Čestmír Suška and others, Gebauer created his works Cricket’s Dream, Figures in Windows and Female Swimmer II on a temporary basis. This exhibition was the culmination of many events at a time when the communist regime was denying young artists access to official galleries. In terms of its concept and quality, this exhibition became a model for a host of similar events in other towns and cities, for instance in Kladno, where an open air festival is still held entitled Kladno Courtyards.
Many other well known events were to follow, such as the exhibition Dwarves in the Garden of the Hůla Brothers in Kostelec nad Černými lesy (1985), Healthy for Rockfest at the Palace of Culture (1987), Czech Fishpond in Vojan Park (1988) at the exhibition Coloured Sculpture, a project for alteration of the Lower Deer Moat of Prague Castle in 1994 and the exhibition of Caterpillar (of early capitalism) in Zlín in 2001 and on Wenceslas Square in Prague on the occasion of Sculpture Grande in 2003.
The exhibition also makes reference to lesser known events from recent years, such as Battleground – stone objects in Dalejské údolí, Prague, Bird for Bird Hill in Opava, the memorial to policemen and firemen in Karlova, Prague, and a detailed procedure surrounding the project of the statue of Mozart for Zelný trh in Brno, as well as to designs and ideas which never saw light of day.
