Anna Zemánková

After her death, interest in her work continued to rise steeply. The Cavin-Morris Gallery in New York has organized around 40 exhibitions of her work since 1993, and in 2011 the New Museum in New York presented her in the exhibition Ostalgia. In 2013 she was included in the international exhibition of the 55th Venice Biennale. In the Czech Republic, she has had retrospective exhibitions at the Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb, the Moravian Gallery in Brno, the Olomouc Museum of Art (1998), and the Prague City Gallery (1998). Her drawings were exhibited at the International Triennial INSITA (Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava) and are on permanent display at the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne and at the exhibition of naïve art at the North Bohemian Gallery of Fine Arts in Litoměřice.

In 1979, Anna Zemánková was represented at the Outsiders exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, which was the beginning of her international fame. In the 1980s, her diabetes worsened and she gradually had to undergo the amputation of both legs. After her convalescence she lived in a home for the elderly in Mníšek pod Brdy from 1983. She worked as an artist until her death in 1986.

The 1970s represent a new peak in her work. Against a subtly tinted background, she created floating and hallucinatorily perfect flowers that give a detached impression despite their meticulously executed drawings. She combines pastel with crayon and pen to mark out the lines and uses aniline paint to accentuate the colours. She has also begun to create drawings for her admirers on small postcard formats and on small handmade paper cards. These she then sent out as invitations or New Year's cards.

In the second half of the 1970s, she created textile collages from scraps of satin, which she starched and, after gluing to a paper backing, decorated with ornamental marks using fabric paint, pen, pastel or marker. Using the same technique she used in her work, Anna Zemánková decorated curtains, upholstery, lampshades or her own hats, thus fulfilling the principle of "bricolage", whereby her living space merged into a (Gesamtkunstwerk).

For Anna Zemánková, creating was a fundamental life activity, thanks to which she could prolong her symbolic fertility and become again and again the creator of new existences, "which were more beautiful than nature had ever created." In a documentary film made about her in 1969 by Vlastimil Venclík, she appears as a woman of exalted expression and dramatic gestures, who does not doubt her privileged status as an artist or the uniqueness of her talent.

One stage of the drawings is represented by meticulously constructed microscopic details assembled into exploded tissues. Anna Zemánková has often consistently rendered tens of thousands of dots and lines in a single painting. Later, in this fascination with microstructures, she discovered the technique of perforation. The possibility of illuminating a perforated drawing led her to produce lampshades with which she beautified her apartment. After her first exhibition in 1966, she temporarily succumbed to the admiration of the public, began to sign her works, and a certain mannerism and aestheticization prevailed in her work. She no longer dwelled on small drawings, the background of her drawings were effectively shaded by spreading coloured pigment and her compositions became more decorative.

Friends of her children, including photographers Jan Reich and Jaroslav Krejčí and FAMU student Vlastimil Venclík, came to the Zemáneks' apartment in Dejvice to admire her drawings. As early as 1964, she presented her work in the first of the "Days of Open Doors". Her work came to the attention of Jean Dubuffet who included several of her pieces in the Collection de l’Art Brut Lausanne, the world’s most notable collection of Outsider Art. Olga Havlová also learned about Anna and brought the art historian Jiří Vykoukal to see the remarkable draughtswoman. He arranged her first exhibition in the foyer of the Na zábradlí Theatre in 1966. In the same year, Arsén Pohribný included her paintings in a travelling exhibition of naïve art. In 1968 he also selected her for an exhibition at the Brno House of Arts and in 1971 for an international naïve art exhibition in Prato, Italy. In 1969 she became one of two characters in the documentary film Man and Woman by Vlastimil Venclík.

After 1963, the rhythm of her paintings calmed down and compact shapes that recall underwater fauna became predominant. Her imagery was dominated by the water element – fleshy shapes flourish and float through space as if in a state of weightlessness. The artist herself referred to her work as a love experience and her repressed erotic energy manifested itself in the form of womb-like formations or in the form of intersections of plump and phallic shapes. The process in which the artist's consciousness turned inward and the distinction between the external and the internal lost its meaning can be described as "physical introspection." Motherhood, which played a key role in Anna Zemánek's emotional life, is reflected in her work in paintings that bear the word Birth or Nativity in their title. In them, organic shapes are combined with intangible bursts of light that recall the haloes of religious images or the transpersonal visions of spiritist mediums.

Anna Zemánková played the dominant role of the "Great Mother" in the family. She led her children strictly, but realized herself in making toys and clothes, decorating their rooms and inventing fairy tales. As the children grew older and this role began to fade, she experienced a personal crisis, which manifested itself in mood swings and emotional instability. In 1960, her sons discovered their mother's early paintings and convinced her to return to art. This "auto-art therapy" helped her find a new meaning in life and soon became a compulsive passion for her.

After a brief period in which she experimented with format, technique or colour, her work became a daily ritual before 1960. She drew while listening to classical music, often in a state between a dream and a pre-dawn wakefulness. She used mostly A1 and A2 quarters (but eventually also smaller to completely miniature formats) on which, while still in a subdued state of consciousness, she laid out the overall composition, which she later filled in with ornamental details. She started with a pencil sketch, which she painted over with tempera paints or pastel. She worked with professional painting equipment and used a range of coloured valers, sometimes adding reflective colours to enhance the details. After 1963, she used mostly dry pastel, which she "softened" with cooking oil and supplemented with ink or ink pen drawing. Later, she traced details in pencil and microfix, emphasizing them by perforation and embossing. Anna Zemánková was constantly experimenting with new materials and trying different methods: paper and textile collage, crochet applications, pasting beads and sequins... The techniques she had previously used in decorating her home and clothes became an integral part of her work.

In 1933, she married Bohumír Zemánek (1904–1969), a lieutenant of the intendantura (rear security of the army), with whom she had three sons, Bohumír (1935), Slavomír (1936) and Bohumil (1942). After the birth of Slavomir, Anna Zemánek decided to devote herself to her children and household and gave up her artistic work. From 1939 the family lived in Brno, where Bohumír Zemánek was a clerk at the pricing office. After the birth of her third son Bohumil, she had several more unsuccessful pregnancies. In 1948 the family adopted a daughter Anna and moved to Prague, where Bohumír Zemánek was called to the General Staff of the Czechoslovak Army. After joining the army, his son Slavomír was transferred to the Technical auxiliary battalion and Bohumír Zemánek was suspended and reassigned to a food warehouse. He died in a traffic accident in 1969.

Anna Zemánková (23 August 1908 – 15 January 1986) was a Czech painter. She was one of the world's most important artists of art brut. However, her high artistic culture, the diversity of her work, and her clear inner vision make her a departure from the original definition of art brut, and she figures in this category as a solitaire. Eighteen of Zemánková’s works were included in the seminal 2013 Venice Biennale. Her works were exhibited in New York, Paris, and on solo exhibitions in Lausanne and Prague. She is represented in the world's most important art brut collections and auctioned at Christie's.