Stanislav Kolíbal is undoubtedly one of the most significant protagonists of Czech, but also international art of the second half of the 20th century with an overlap (thanks to the artist’s respectable age) to the 21st century. Born in Orlová na Těšínsku he moved to Ostrava with his parents following the German occupation of this area. At the end of the war he was engaged in working in the Ostrava mines. It was perhaps these early experiences that injected the existential vertone in his later, otherwise, at first sight quite rationally geometrical work. Kolíbal was inclined to fine arts from an early age. He started modelling and painting when he was thirteen. In 1943 (at the age of 18) he exhibited at a group exhibition in the House of Art in Ostrava. The decision to become an artist was unequivocal, therefore Kolíbal decided to study directly in the centre of action – in Prague.
At that time Kolíbal studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague with Professor Strnadel; therefore, he was not directly one of the artists who studied at the sculpting studio of Josef Wagner, which was where the very strong generation of artists (such as V.+V. Janoušek, O. Zoubek, M. Chlupáč, Z. Palcr or E. Kmentová) was constituted. He corresponded with them, however, on the generation level and in searching for ways out of the endlessly imposed dogmatism of the Socialist realism. The work of practically all the mentioned sculptors was inspired by the models of the inter-war avant-garde, but the shapes of their sculptures were summarised, abstracted and stylized to sometimes more geometrical shapes, other times to round curves, all of which excluded the very descriptive realism.
In the 1950s, Kolíbal’s subject was usually the female figure with soft and round shapes. His female bodies are often portrayed in unusual positions: we can find in them Kolíbal’s typical interest in instability and in evoking the feeling of insecurity. His statues of figures and torsos differed from the figural works of his peers at first sight. This artist’s original approach within the scope of the situation back then was ironically thanks to the fact that he didn’t study sculpture: “if I had studied sculpture, I would have never experienced that ever so needed feeling of being unencumbered”, recalls the artist.
Year 1963 was the breaking point: the artist shifts to abstract geometric form. He was able to easily alternate to it not only because he was free of classical sculpting issues such as the building up of mass, but also because he was interested in geometry already in his figural sculptures, demonstrated in the angular position of the arms folded in a sort of diamond shape (Torzo s rukama v bok [Torso with Arms Akimbo], 1959). Since the year 1963 the name Stanislav Kolíbal started to be mentioned in relation to constructive art but Kolíbal did not fully adapt the clean language of construction. Similarly free is his relationship to minimalism, which is often assigned to him. While American minimalism was founded on Frank Stella’s statement “What you see is what you see.”, Kolíbal’s abstract works imply other meanings and messages. Unlike in minimalism that contains strict series’, Kolíbal’s statues are the result of a premeditated composition with a final compositional tension. The topic of instability and unsteadiness becomes an inspiring topic for him. He is constructing his statues and installations from various parts, and a typical Kolíbal composition gives the impression of instability. “Four hemispheres, leaning on one another, kept one another in a peaceful vertical position. They looked very stable but it was just an illusion. They could have fallen apart at any minute”, says Kolíbal about his sculpture Labil from the year 1964. Other times he achieves the feeling of tension by combining organic and inorganic elements (i.e. the statue Symmetrical Object of the Year, 1965). Plaster became the dominating material, which, with its whiteness, takes the expressive effect from his work and directs the viewer rather to a meditative perception. The fragility of this material fully supported the basic idea of Kolíbal’s work, which testifies about the fragility and instability of the human being.
Even in the 1970s instability remained as one of his main elements expressing the feeling of the unpredictability of the human existence. An important moment was his contemplation about time, its changes and duration, and about things that decay and fall apart. Formally, in the 1970s and 80s there is an increase in craftiness in the composition of elements; Kolíbal starts using other materials such as plywood, pieces of sheet metal, sheets of glass, as well as strings and threads with which he replaced the drawn line. In these works Kolíbal toys with optical and sensory illusions – the seemingly “drawn” line has material form.
During the 1970s Kolíbal was not allowed to exhibit. This ironically led him to discover a new artistic form – installation. He concentrated on working in his studio, where he started to put together individual elements into free compositions in relation to the given space: the wall or the floor became a part of the artist’s concept (e.g. Hnědá tabule [Brown Board], 1973; Dvojí možnost [Double Posibility], 1974, and others).
A certain turn in the development of his work comes after 1985 when he enters the scene with relief objects called Geometric Exercises. He has abandoned his former fragile figurativeness. Instead of that the artist started to concentrate on the composition of geometric shapes in a way for a constellation to originate which is harmonic and which presents the viewer with a system. Another breaking point for Kolíbal was the year 1988. Back then he received an invitation from DAAD for a one-year stay in West Berlin. A new world opened up to Kolíbal which was so completely different from the world of a life in totalitarianism. There was the endless freedom on one side, but also the consuming western world full of inexhaustible information that Kolíbal perceived as a world of chaos. This strongly influenced his work. He started working on a series of Constructions – large three-dimensional constructions from wood (later also from iron). In these works Kolíbal expressed his craving for structure which stands against the state of chaos. He wanted to express positive values – something that would not have room for destruction and instability that for years mirrored the state of being in the limited spiritual space of a Communist country.
At the end of the millennium he creates the sculptures Olympia I. and Olympia II. behind which stands the author’s recollection of his visit of ancient Olympia with its collapsed piles of architectonic elements. The principle of instability and principle of a stopped fall has continuation here: a collapse takes place. The statues of the Olympias are black and the elements are organized in a way to evoke the impression of coincidence. Their composition, however, is a well considered conception.
After the year 2000 Kolíbal went back to some of the principles and forms that he already pursued earlier: he produced the cycles called Black Reliefs, White Reliefs and Grey Reliefs. Black Reliefs appear in 1999. Here the artist examines the layering of geometric planes. A series of White Reliefs from 2011 follows where layering is not so apparent but geometric drawing dominates. This series of reliefs develops his Berlin and post-Berlin drawings, which had a continuation soon after 1988 in the three-dimensional objects called Constructions (in which the Berlin drawings were their sort of ground plan predecessor). The second, later path from older drawings led precisely to the White Reliefs, which contain the polarity of spatial drawing and spatial three-dimensionality. The Grey Reliefs from 2012 are the connection of the author’s several experiences: the drawing of the White Reliefs is interconnected with the illusive game with reality known from Kolíbal’s work during the 1970s and 80s.
Practically from the very beginning Kolíbal’s work is accompanied by his interest in geometric arrangement of matter and space. His sculptures and objects are characteristic for applying minimal resources, while having substantial testimonies. Critic Tomáš Pospiszyl gave an apt description of his work when he spoke about Kolíbal as the creator of “emotional geometry”. His work is not actually cold in expression: it is based on the perception of the complementation of contrary values such as stability and instability, order and chaos, duration and frailty, origination and extinction. Kolíbal’s work is the mirror of his personal emotions, evoked by the surrounding world and society. Kolíbal’s work touches the basic transcendent values of the human life. And although this character of art, in the sense of Chalupecký’s emphasis on the transcendent message of an art work, seems to be overlooked by many these days, Kolíbal managed to get admiration even in the lines of many renowned young artists. I think that this is a great satisfaction not only for the artist himself but also for the entire Czech art of the second half of the 20th century.
