Pioneer of kinetic op-art Milan Dobeš died
The road to becoming an internationally renowned artist was not at all easy for Milan Dobeš. He faced problems at university in Bratislava because of his capitalist background, as his father owned a textile factory in Český Těšín until 1948. He was able to continue his studies only thanks to the support of the rector Ján Mudroch. A crucial moment and turning point in his career was a three-month stay in France, where he was able to go thanks to a fake marriage application. He came into contact with modern art, making a living painting street scenes.
In 1966, he was offered an exhibition at the House of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship in Prague, a bastion of socialist realism, which paradoxically marked his breakthrough into the art world. The exhibition of light and kinetic objects in an attractive space on Wenceslas Square, which was originally planned as a “truc event”, attracted 56,000 visitors. It also attracted the attention of world-renowned theorists, including Frank Popper and Udo Kultermann, who ranked Dobeš among the key figures of kinetic art and op-art. Frank Popper subsequently invited Dobes to participate in the Kunst-Licht-Kunst exhibition in Eindhoven, the first post-war exhibition of its kind in the world.
Dobeš’s works then travelled to prestigious world exhibitions – Documenta 4 in Kassel (1968), EXPO ’70 in Osaka and the Montevideo Biennale in 1969, where he won the First Prize for Kinetic Sculpture. Alongside Victor Vasarely, Andy Warhol, Edward Kienholz and Martial Rayss, he was invited to Helsinki for the Ars 69 exhibition, where sixty of the world’s best artists exhibited. “How I got there, I don’t know, but I was there. And Kolář was there with me,” Milan Dobeš recalled almost half a century later for a film documentary by the Museum of Art. His position among the key representatives of world constructivism was confirmed in 2013 by his participation in the prestigious exhibition “Dynamo. A Century of Light and Motion in Art 1913-2013” at the Grand Palais in Paris, which recapitulated a century of kinetic art. From the former Czechoslovakia, only František Kupka and Milan Dobeš were selected for the exhibition.
One of the highlights of Dobeš’s career was his collaboration with the American Wind Symphony Orchestra in the USA in 1971, where he participated in the creation of a monumental light and kinetic object that was synchronized with the music of important composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki and Toshiro Mayuzumi.
Milan Dobeš was an equilibrist working with light and movement, creating precise op art prints and large-scale spatial kinetic objects. As a refined illusionist and colour minimalist, he worked rationally, yet created surprisingly emotive works. His work altered the reality of space, his vibrant works immersing the viewer and transporting them to other worlds.
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