In Harmony with Nature

Recent retrospective exhibitions at the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen and at the Olomouc Museum of Art have demonstrated that the quality of the early works of Ludmila Padrtová (b. 1931), discovered only in 1996 by the art historian Jiří Valoch, as well as their period setting are so extraordinary that she is now considered one of the leading figures of Czech post-war lyrical abstraction. Her best works from the years 1956 to 1960, with their sources of inspiration (nature, classical music, poetry) and emphasis on the linking of colours with the painter‘s gesture, evoking movement in free space, made her significantly different from the pursuits of her male companions, headed by the “father of Czech informel“ Vladimír Boudník (1924–1968). The fact that Padrtová did not consider herself being an artist made her enjoy her work even more. At the age of twenty she began to systematically draw mainly natural motifs, especially trees (only a few dry pastels have survived from that time), at twenty-five she boldly entered the field of abstraction, only to end her career as an artist without regret when reaching thirty. She discovered that what she had devoted herself to in advance and without the ambition to become well-known in the world of great art has for others become a “original discovery“ within the framework of an emerging fashionable trend (albeit unofficial) called informel. A trend she refused to be part of...
Instigated by the gallery owner and collector Milan Mikuš, she returned to being an active artist in 2011, after an incredible fifty-year-long break, creating her first drawings some time around mid-February. The technique of her choice was of course dry pastel, which she favoured in the early years of her career. In quick succession, in the course of four months (February to May), she created a remarkable collection of some 120 drawings, clearly indicating that we were witnessing the birth of something out of the ordinary (though the author was of the opposite opinion). Unlike her early drawings (which were never gavin any titles), Padrtová‘s new works were arranged in cycles, the names which well describe their content and the source of the artist‘s inspiration (e.g. Returns – Dreamy Landscapes, Returns – Waterways, Streams, Surfaces, Returns – Farewell to the Waters of South Bohemia, Returns – Landscapes, Returns – Double Drawings and Poetry, Returns – The Vlkov Garden). Milan Mikuš exhibited a selection of these drawings at the Prague-based Maldoror Gallery in October of the same year. Generally favourable reactions to her new works inspired Padrtová to continue and between June and the end of the year she created new extensive collections of drawings, this time employing new techniques like ink, distemper, crayons, as well as other materials and technological processes, giving her individual drawings titles in addition to including them in a particular cycle, which is important for “reading“ them. Besides drawings, she also made a few medium-format paintings as well as several works using the technique of pastel on canvas. Her new works, drawings in particular, in spite of their formally abstract nature generally refer to the author‘s extremely sensitive perception of nature and uniquely continue her earlier work. In the two years that followed, Padrtová worked with great intensity, expanding her artistic portfolio by adding new techniques, including her distinctive collages (which she calls “lepenice“) or even works created with a pine twig. Exceptional is also a series of her drawings called Blind (2012), which she created without visual control, i.e. at night in the dark. Her new (scattered) portfolio includes some two thousand works on paper and over twenty paintings, and it needs to be mentioned that the other, yet not mentioned, but no less important and exciting facet of the recent works could be described as being quasi-figurative, combining the author‘s unique sense of humour with wisdom.

As we have already indicated, Padrtová, in line with her artistic nature, initially picked up where she once left off, but already with her first drawings it was obvious that her new works have a different expression and content, characterized by colour delicacy (and resonation), unique lightness (especially with pastels) as well as spiritual serenity. Compared with her early drawings, her new drawings (or, more accurately, in many cases combinations of drawings and paintings), though often having very intimate dimensions, express more action and at the same time are fragile and monumental, particularly when referencing landscape or childhood experiences. If we look at her drawings carefully, we will realize with amazement that in the abstract tangle of lines we see at first sight there are not only trees (which are most obvious) or birds, but also life above and below the water surface. We forgot to mention the fact that the artist is at home in the nature surrounding her native town of Třeboň, which gave Padrtová the unique ability to capture, sometimes with very economical means (she will often do with a black crayon and eraser), the almost incomprehensible flickering of light, atmospheric jitter, and reflection of water surfaces. The artist‘s long-term preservation of essential images from the landscape of childhood in her memory has a remarkable outcome in her new drawings, since it is blessed with the rare ability to see the essential. This also eventually led us to the decision to focus only on these motifs while preparing her exhibition at the Václav Chad Gallery.
 

Ladislav Daněk

Notes
1/  16. 5.–11. 8. 2013, Ludmila Padrtová. Gesture, Movement, Colour. Works 1951–2013. Gallery of West Bohemia – Exhibition space „13“.  23. 1.–20. 4. 2014, Ludmila Padrtová. First Lady of Czech Abstract Art. Works 1951–2013. Olomouc Museum of Modern Art – Museum of Modern Art, Salon Cabinet.
2/  13. 10.–29. 10. 2011, Ludmila Padrtová. Returns After Fifty Years. New Drawings. Maldoror Gallery, Prague.


Ludmila Padrtová

Born on September 14, 1931 in Třeboň. Painter, graphic artist, painter, photographer. One of the key figures of the Czech lyrical abstraction of the 1950s. The period of her early work ended in 1961, and she did not return to art until 2001. Her first husband was the modern art historian Jiří Padrta (1929–1978), followed by the painter Jan Vyleťal (1940–2013). Studies: 1945–1949 grammar school in Třeboň. Works in public collections: National Gallery in Prague, Olomouc Museum of Art, and The Klatovy/Klenová Gallery.

Literature: Jiří Valoch: Ludmila Padrtová. Zapomenutá osobnost českého informelu. Prostor Zlín, 1997, No. 6, pp. 14–15. – Ludmila Padrtová. Obrazy, kresby. Exhibition catalogue. Text by Jiří Valoch. Hradec Králové, Gallery of Modern Art 1998. – Zbyněk Sedláček: Průkopnické práce Ludmily Padrtové. Ateliér, 1998, No. 25–26, p. 4. – Ludmila Padrtová. Obrazy, kresby 1955–1960. Exhibition catalogue. Text by Jiří Valoch. Prague, Kant 1999. – Věra Jirousová: Informel jako životní možnost. Ateliér, 1999, No. 23, p. 5. – Ladislav Daněk (ed.), Jiří Valoch Zdenek Primus, Helena Lepičová Meistrová, Martina Pachmanová: Ludmila Padrtová. Gesto, pohyb, barva. Dílo 1951–2013. Pilsen, Gallery of West Bohemia 2013.