Jiří Kornatovský

The drawings, however, cannot be interpreted merely as a mathematical game. The author often creates them in a monastery cloister over the span of a few years and besides the artistic performance they are also a result of spiritual concentration connected with meditation. (To one point, charcoal on cardboard, 220 x 280 cm, 2000).

The key to understanding Kornatovský’s drawings may be St. Augustine’s treatise on the reflection of the world of ideas and sensory reality (Augustine, charcoal on paper, 280 x 340 cm, 2000-3, St. Augustine II, combined technique on canvas, 140 x 160 cm, 2007, Contemplation, charcoal on canvas, 80 x 100 cm, 2008).

In the years 1998-99 he founded his own Gallery Hermit in Prague.

Giant objects from the beginning of the 1990s offer perfect spatial illusion of voluminous figures of organic shape (And out/aerial meditation, charcoal on cardboard, 220 x 500 cm, 1990–92, It, charcoal on cardboard 220 x 480 cm, 1989–92). The time range of their creation bears witness to how technically demanding these drawings are.

When interpreting the large-format drawing from the same period (From nowhere to nowhere – Forget everything/ You are what you cannot remember/, graphite, cardboard, 220 x 460 cm, 1990–97, GASK) it is necessary to also take into account the social atmosphere by the end of the 1980s and the seemingly hopeless situation of young artists, participants of the unofficial group Confrontations. According to the author, the drawing reflects feelings, in which the experience of a child is mixed with the empty spaces of an abandoned monastery and the situation of the confined space of a studio. Another variation on the same theme is a stark, almost technical drawing of a broken tube with a dark mouth (From nowhere to nowhere/silence, charcoal on cardboard, 220 x 480 cm, 1989).

The series of meditation drawings (Meditation by drawing) derives from Meditation (1990, exhibited 2006, Museum Kampa), where the plastic object in the shape of a toroid encloses some abstract country inside. The surface of the rotational body is sometimes disrupted and expands into space (In space, 1992). The torus itself represents a perfect shape that has neither end, nor beginning and optically centralises attention to the middle, just like the electric toroid coil, which induces the magnetic field in its centre (Prayer, charcoal 275 x 705 cm, 2000-20003, Meditation in archetype, combined technique on canvas, 210 x 220 cm, 2006, Meditation by archetype, combined technique on canvas, 210 x 220 cm, 2000-2010).

This shape also offers the possibility of mathematical transformation, during which the whole object can be turned inside out through eversion (like From nowhere to nowhere, 1990-7), to work in a 4D space and to decrease the central space through shortening of the axis, leading to final degeneration into a sphere. (It, charcoal on cardboard, 220 x 480 cm, 1989–92).

The large format paintings sometimes only capture a part of the depicted object in order to leave space for pondering about the things that surpass us (Right left, Martin meditation, charcoal on cardboard, 220 x 540 cm, 1989–93, Eternal story, charcoal on cardboard, 220 x 500 cm, 1990–94, Sanctus, charcoal on cardboard, 220 x 520 cm, 1997–99), or they directly refer to infinity (88.88.88., combined technique on canvas, 100 x 120 cm, 2010). Organic form in the drawing resembling a gastrula can be interpreted as an immersion of what was on the surface into the inside, into the darkness, into the closure from the outside world (Remembering an idea, charcoal on canvas, 210 x 240 cm, 2005-6).

At the very beginning there were drawings and large graphic sheets depicting relationships (Two – Free variation on an hour of the lovers, 1988, etching, All at once, 1989, etching, GASK, And tickle, charcoal on paper, 200 x 380 cm, 1988), sometimes with a hidden erotic subtext (Shape of adventure, 1987). They are characterised by accurate execution and the use of abstract symbols derived from natural shapes. The composition of the event contains a secret. Space is not defined, the story pours over the horizon where we cannot see (Is anybody else coming? (Countryside), etching with aquatint, 1988, GASK), the outlined opening into the interior of the object offers only darkness but there is light coming out of the crack on the other side (One, 1988).

Objects depicted are neither anchored in space, nor related to earth. A mild asymmetry sometimes gives the impression of them growing upwards (Meditation by drawing, charcoal on cardboard, 600 x 220 cm, 1988–89). Titles of the meditation drawings offer riddles rather than explanations (Meditation eastern, 1990–97, 220 x 520 cm, Liturgic meditation, 1990–94).

At the end of the 1980s he published a number of spiritual manifestos and in 1991 he co-founded Hermit Foundation in the Cistercian monastery of Plasy. He created the Codes and Signs project at the international art symposium Hermit 92. In the following years he attended study and creative residences in the Carmelite monastery in Sejny, Poland (1992), in Florence (1993), New York City and Boston (1994-1995) and Hohenosig, Germany (1997). During his stay in the USA he held a series of exhibitions and lectures. In 2005 and 2006 he worked in the Augustinian monastery at the Lesser Quarter in Prague and again he visited the United States (Los Angeles).

Jiří Kornatovský is mostly known as an author of unique large black and white charcoal drawings of plastic objects on giant cardboard that gained him respect and recognition. These drawings stand outside the Czech artistic tradition due to their artistic rendition, and when they first appeared on the art scene in the middle of the 1980s, they seemed to be an apparition.

At the end of the 1980s Kornatovský drew abstract playful images dedicated to his family (… oh you people, 1989) and celebrating the joy of a newborn child (That and that and that-a-thing, 1988, charcoal on paper, 150 x 360 cm).

After graduating from a technical teaching school in Pilsen, he studied at the College and High Art School of Vaclav Hollar in 1977-82, followed by the study of monumental painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague with professors Arnošt Paderlík and Jiří Ptáček (1982–87).

Jiří Kornatovský (born 2 March 1952, Plasy, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech painter, draughtsman and printmaker.