Bedřich Dlouhý was one of the founding members of the Šmidrové Group in 1954,
which picked up on the ideas of Dadaism and studied the aesthetics of strangeness.
In the group, he met other major figures of Czech art, such as Jaroslav Vožniak, Jan
Koblasa, Karel Nepraš, and Rudolf Komorous. In the late fifties, he briefly took up
structural expression, in which he arrived at a pure abstraction. But at the same time,
his paintings, reliefs, and objects included snippets of reality, torn out of their original
context. Later, he switched to romantically attuned visions, into which his rich
imagination was reflected. At the same time, he was interested in the rough reality of
the contemporary world, and in the charm of discarded and unnecessary objects.
Since the very beginning, Bedřich Dlouhý exhibited a very well defined sense for the
precise expression of his ideas, in which his inexhaustible imagination was enriched
by a touch of reality. He also marries what is today a nearly unbelievable virtuosity in
drawing and painting, in which he matches old masters. Of course, his object is not to
compete with them in the perfection of rendering. He uses refined metaphors in his
painting, which connect the past with the present and the future.
A counter-pole to the perfectly managed classical artistic processes is
assemblage, which the author has liked using from his early periods until the present.
In it, he successfully manages to capture the character of the contemporary world. He
approximates French new realism, most of all probably Arman’s famous
accumulations. In his assemblages, Bedřich Dlouhý achieves a rough, raw depiction
of reality, which contrasts with the smooth old-master-like painting. He is not
interested merely in form, but in the precise expression of the content, in capturing the
absurdity of today’s world, with its convoluted development. The scrimmage of
various objects therefore becomes a mirror to the situation in society and civilisation,
an ironic view of complex, unorganised, and often incomprehensible and strange
events of the day. But above all, his work is a reflection of his soul, his thinking and
feeling, and becomes a sort of an imaginary self-portrait in which order mingles with
chaos. The two do stand opposite one another, but at the same time, they cannot
exist without one another, as one is growing out of the other. Naturally, the method of
collage is close to Bedřich Dlouhý, which is so characteristic of the thinking of the 20th
and it seems also the 21st century. Like assemblage, collage allows him to connect
seemingly incongruous elements. But he supplements it with other techniques.
His light drawings are suggestive. In them, he connects a fragile and fine line
with an internal radiation. They look like magical altars that invite deep meditation.
The atmosphere in them approximates the installations of Christian Boltanský. Dlouhý
uses everyday objects that we see every day, and therefore do not really notice them,
with a special romantic feeling. He carefully observes what is going on, what
situations develop, and how our environment and our perceptions of it change. In his
work, he applies for example pages from fashion magazines, which in the
contemporary context precisely uncover one of the faces of this superficial and hurried
era. A world enters his paintings, which rushes mad-headedly after transient values,
and cheap and easy success. His expression is close to that of pop-art, which depicts
with irony the fundamental character traits of consumer society, responds to the
overweight omnipresence of advertising, and arrives at a poetic that ties into the
undying legacy of dada.
Bedřich Dlouhý arrived at a particular opinion, which is based on sensitive
perception and an unmediated knowledge of the environment in which we have lived
and which, in connection with the post-War political and social situation, differed
significantly from Western Europe, which headed in an entirely different direction.
Time had stopped in the Czech lands, as in the other countries of the so-called East
Bloc; whereas, free democratic countries developed much faster and more naturally.
So Dlouhý’s work and the thinking and feeling of a whole generation reflected
something from Kafka’s bizarre world, in which the goal cannot be reached by any
means, in which the resolution of problems keeps getting farther away. In spite of all
our efforts, we often return to the place from which we started. Bedřich Dlouhý
managed to uncover and capture with absolute perfection the banality and mundane
nature, as well as the uniqueness, of human life. In fact, he works with the same
modes of expression all the time, and he manages all of them perfectly. His unusual
technical abilities, his virtuosity in painting and drawing, are never entirely self-serving.
He can intricately connect his favourite methods to create a special tension, to make
us ask questions that each of us must answer himself. His work is very rich in
expression, and can depict the transformations of the world in their ambiguity,
unforeseability, and convolutedness.
Dlouhý creates a sort of curious, never-ending diary full of diversions and
labyrinths. In it, he writes all his thoughts and ideas by putting together objects he
finds, which are authentic evidence of their era. Sometimes, he expresses himself in
a very intimate way, and his work becomes his personal confession. Other times, he
takes the route of a monumental depiction, in which various levels of meaning
intertwine. But in its nature, it remains fragile and fine, with the author’s rich internal
world being reflected in it. That world is not isolated from the events that touch upon
us personally, whether we want it or not. Reflected in it is a conviction about the
significance of ethical values, faith in the sense of artistic expression, and at the same
time an uncertain fear of an uncertain future. The author’s lifelong experience has in
recent years been concentrated in his monumental Self-portraits which combine
various motives, various ideas, and also all of the technical processes that the author
has ever used. With an unusual lightness, he again returns to the perfect painting of
old masters; in contrast with it stand precisely selected technical elements or daily
objects that are of no longer of use. The large objects express his attitudes to the
world and its philosophy, with which it approaches contemporary society. They
express the complexity of his thought, in which doubt is mixed with hope.
In spite of his introverted nature, Bedřich Dlouhý did not limit himself to his own
work. He also engaged in teaching. In 1990 – 1995, he was a professor and the head
of the studio of painting at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, where he educated a
number of students over the course of his work there. After discontinuing his teaching
career, he again engages nearly every day in very concentrated work in his Prague
studio. He is represented in many major public and private collections in this country
and abroad (the National Gallery in Prague, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris,
Muésée d´Art Moderne in Paris, Gallerie Arturo Schwarz in Milan, nearly all regional
galleries in Bohemia and Moravia, etc.). He has been exhibiting independently since
1962. His work has been studied by some major Czech theorists (Jan Kříž, Věra
Jirousová). Unfortunately, no larger and more comprehensive publication has been
published yet that would thoroughly map out and evaluate his work. His work has
received official acclaim on several occasions. In 1965, he won the main prize for
painting at the International Biennale of Youth in Paris, and in 1996 a gold medal of
the Prague Academy of Fine Art for his pedagogical activities and his participation in
reforming the school after the fall of the communist regime. Bedřich Dlouhý’s artistic
development is very complex, his work is on the border of several streams
(structuralism, photorealism, neo-dadaism, new figuration), between a legacy of
perfect knowledge of traditions and artistic streams of past eras and the search for
and discovery of new values that are relevant for this time.
Jiří Machalický