3x3 Contemporary Czech Art in Berlin with Jan Smejkal - Tschechisches Zentrum Berlin

The first artist with Czech origins who we will present after the summer break in the series Contemporary Czech Art in Berlin is Jan Smejkal (born 1948 in Beroun, CZ).

Jan Smejkal studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague in 1967 and then continued his studies at Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main from1968. He is mostly interested in the process of capturing moments in his drawings and transmitting them into paintings. Since 2000 he lived for about twenty years in Berlin and together with his partner Ljuba Beránková he ran the gallery space Bleibtreu.

In his work, he focuses on the capturing of different records of impressions, impulses, pieces of things, details on postcard format papers, which he produces wherever he is and creates a huge archive with drawn memories. These records are then transmitted to paintings, text walls or postcards. He applies words in different ways on a monochromatic canvas so that the viewer himself can compose his own sentences. The paintings with inscriptions should be understood as a whole.

He presented some paintings on this year's Positions at the booth of the Hilgemann.art Gallery. We took that as an occasion to make this interview and Instagram Takeover.

You can find more info on Jan Smejkal on his website: https://jan-smejkal.com