Zdeněk Hůla studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU), and graduated in 1972). He still paints, though since 1984 he has also occupied himself with sculpture and is probably best known these days as a sculptor rather than painter.
In the 1980s he began creating objects mostly from wood, along with twigs, branches and small logs. He emphasises the organisation of the material as well as its construction, assembling a host of objects into simple, regular shapes. In Coloured Statue he inserted mirrors into a geometrical wooden structure which reflect the surroundings and evoke the impression of infinity.
Since 1994 Hůla has worked mainly with stone. He uses hard stone, mainly granite, which allows him to make exact and permanent cuts. He does not process the entire block of stone, but prefers to exploit the contrast between the smooth, worked surface and the natural form of the stone. He splits some blocks in half in order to place them back to back. Most of his sculptures are composed of two blocks. He sometimes fits both parts together perfectly (in “soft contact” as he puts it), while other times cracks appear which allow the artist to play with the effect of the light passing through the stone. This is apparent in the “astronomical” sculpture entitled From Solstice to Solstice (1998): when the solstice or equinox takes place, beams of light penetrate the stone and fall onto one spot. The sculptures Sundial (1998) and Sun Gate operate on a similar principle.
Sculptures linking stone and glass form a special group of Hůla’s work, in which he works with the contrast between the full substantiality of stone and the lightness, delicacy and translucency of glass. Heavy boulders are placed on a glass table which is invisible from afar, so creating the impression that the stone is hovering in the air.
Hůla began his career as a painter as a figurist, though was more and more drawn to the theme of nature and natural events, which finally predominated as a theme in his paintings. Geometrising elements intermingle with organic forms. The painter’s main interest was in finding an order, a fixed point in the chaos of the world and the cosmos. Although his early paintings as a student were figural, after graduating he devoted himself to abstraction, and continues to do so to the present day.
The starting point of Hůla’s abstract canvases is often landscape, the sky or the universe and stars as symbols of infinity. The first cycle he completed after graduation was a series of paintings entitled Strange Landscapes, in which he address the depressing situation of the 1970s as well as personal experiences (the death of his father). In the 70s he created the cycle Forbes – Pictures of Fruit Machines from Pubs. At the end of the 70s he returned to landscapes and created the cycle Attempt at One Year, painted on a chalk underlay. At the beginning of the 80s there followed a short intermezzo during which he returned to figurism in the cycle entitled Streets. These pictures for the first time feature the grid as a construction element, an element which still remains an integral part of Hůla’s work. In the 80s the grid was combined with geometric motifs (point, circle, triangle, square, straight line, segment, curve). However, the strict geometry of these canvases is always disturbed. Sometimes the basic geometrical forms are left partially unpainted, while at other times the entire composition is violently disrupted by gestural painting. In the 1990s Hůla created the cycle entitled Still Life with Fruit, another development of the principles of his paintings of the 80s and a reference to Paula Cézanne and that artist’s declaration that the artist should paint in accordance with the form of basic stereometric shapes in nature. The last of Hůla’s cycles, created after 2000, is a series of pictures on the theme of the Natural Elements – Fire, Water, Earth and Air.
