Milan Dobeš. A celebration of colour, light and movement

The Olomouc Museum of Art offers a cross-sectional exhibition of Milan Dobeš (1929), a Czech and Slovak painter, graphic artist, creator of installations and objects.

Milan Dobeš, who was born in Přerov an lived most of his ninety-five years in Slovakia, began with impressionist landscape paintings and urban exteriors of Bratislava created during his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (1951-1956) and continued with cubist paintings of his blue period. Other works on display – geometric drawings and prints in which the basic element is a circle and its segments – are joined by objects and installations in which he works with light and gradually takes on a kinetic and constructivist character.

Dobeš theoretically supported his work with two manifestos. In 1961 he published On Light and Movement, as he used light as an essential part of his work when creating objects. His second artistic manifesto in 1988 was entitled Dynamic Constructivism. Typical of the artist’s work is the use of technicist elements, which is why it is also said that he incorporated a fourth dimension – movement – into his optic-kinetic objects.

In addition to the objects and graphic works from Dobeš his generous gift to the collection of Olomouc Museum of Art, the exhibition includes drawings, paintings, sculptures, optical prints, reliefs, reflective collages, kinetic objects, collages and many others works that interpret both light and movement in an artistically specific way. In the context of the artist’s work, the exhibition also presents a selection of works by important world constructivists who exhibited at the Milan Dobeš Museum in Bratislava.

Milan Dobeš is one of the key authors of the SEFO – Central European Forum Olomouc project and the cross-sectional exhibition of the work of this internationally acclaimed artist, a pioneer of “dynamic constructivism”, is a tribute to the lifelong work of the artist, who will celebrate his ninety sixth birthday in July.

The exhibition was created in collaboration with Ivan Jančár, Director Emeritus of the Bratislava City Gallery, member of the international association of art theorists AICA, winner of the Martin Benka Award and winner of the Star of Italy Award, which was awarded to him by the Italian President. Ivan Jančár is a long-time curator and author of many exhibition projects in Slovakia and abroad, including exhibitions of Milan Dobeš, and is also the author of two monographs on him.