DOI article:
Bartošová, Zuzana: From the Scene to the Clandestine: International Activities of Artists on the Unofficial Slovak Art Scene 1973-1976 (from the 2nd Slovak Visual Artists' Union Congress, 2.11.1972 to Charter '77, 1.1.1977)
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51713#0221
monographs and solo catalogues of individual artists
published after 1989, and then proceeded to gather
source data from artists’ private archives.
Clandestine exhibitions abroad
One particularly noteworthy aspect of the period
under question (1973 to 1976)17 18 was the présentation
of works by unofficial Slovák artists abroad. To begin
with, it is important to reiterate that this is a subject
on which detailed information is very hard to corne
by, as most artists kept their activities secret at the
time. We are talking of unauthorized activities that
ultimately carried a high risk for the artist. Whenever
state authorities became aware of such activities,
the artists would be summoned to police interroga-
tions, their passports could be confiscated and they
risked coming under even doser police scrutiny.
Another obstacle to obtaining accurate information
is the fact that many of the présentations hâve since
been forgotten, especially if an artist, who had been
particularly active in this area, died in the meantime
and if no studies of his or her oeuvre hâve been
published yet (this is one of the reasons why Robert
Cyprich’s international activities remain unexplored).
Other documents, particularly catalogues of artists’
solo exhibitions published after 1989, do not lend
themselves to the purposes of this study because the
information they contain is incomplète: they may
refer to an artist’s participation in a spécifie event but
the absence of a catalogue makes it impossible to re-
construct the artistic context of the présentation (i.e.
a list of exhibiting artists) or its social, organizational
and institutional context. Given the fact that several
artists of the period under discussion operated both
on the official as well as the unofficial art scene, it
is not always possible to tell what form their par-
ticipation took, whether in each particular instance
17 The timeframe is based on the fact that Charter ‘77 was
prepared in the autumn of 1976 although it was not made
public until January 1977.
18 Symposion ‘74, publisher and place of publication not stated,
1974, in private ownership.
19 J. Zelibskâ—Le goût du paradis. [Exhib. Cat.J Introduction by P.
RESTANY. Paris : Galerie — expositions Jean Gilbert Jozon,
1973, unnumbered pages.
their attendance had been approved and organized
through official channels or whether they had organ-
ized their participation in the foreign event individu-
ally, through private contacts. While conceding that
the reasons listed above make it impossible to corne
up with a complété list of international activities, we
can nevertheless highlight some of the exhibitions
that meet the criteria of the present study: i.e. where
the works appeared abroad without the assistance of
official institutions designed to organize international
présentations of Contemporary visual art.
Some artists active on our alternative, and later the
unofficial scene, found their way to Paris where, to-
wards the end of the preceding decade, Alex Mlynárčik
had created a base not only for his own work but also
for the works of his colleagues. Thus it was in Paris,
at the Jean-Gilbert Jozon Gallery, that Jana Želibská
unveiled her installation “A Taste of Paradise” in
December 1973 [Fig. 1], She shared the news with her
colleagues by means of a collective poster entitled Sym-
posion ‘74 and published in sami^datY During his visit
to the Slovák resort of Rajecké Teplice in the autumn
of 1973,19 Pierre Restany wrote a slender catalogue
for an installation that.Želibská had shown at the Pans
Youth Piennale in 1972, having personally and without
official assistance delivered it a year earlier, declaring
it to customs officiais as a theatre set.20
Alex Mlynárčik, an artist who, since his first visit
to Paris in the mid-1960s, maintained lively contacts
of both a personal and artistic nature with the French
capital, did not exhibit at the Youth Biennale in the
years covered by this study. His work, however,
had already been well received abroad: in 1973 he
participated in the Omaha Flow System exhibition as
well as the InternationalPost-conceptualArfExhibition ïsi
Helsinki and Stockholm. Two years later he took part
in an exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem
under the title RecyclingF
20 According to a personal conversation with the author (Sep-
tember 2001), it was Jindřich Chalupecký who drew the
attention of the French part of the Paris Youth Biennale (Raoul
Moulin) to Zelibskà’s work.
21 RESTANY, P: Ailleurs. Alex Mylnáriik. Paris — Bratislava
1995, p. 239. In a personal conversation with the author,
Alex Mlynárčik could no longer recall who had initiated his
participation in the exhibitions listed above, nor was able to
specify which of his works were shown there. (He was not
213
published after 1989, and then proceeded to gather
source data from artists’ private archives.
Clandestine exhibitions abroad
One particularly noteworthy aspect of the period
under question (1973 to 1976)17 18 was the présentation
of works by unofficial Slovák artists abroad. To begin
with, it is important to reiterate that this is a subject
on which detailed information is very hard to corne
by, as most artists kept their activities secret at the
time. We are talking of unauthorized activities that
ultimately carried a high risk for the artist. Whenever
state authorities became aware of such activities,
the artists would be summoned to police interroga-
tions, their passports could be confiscated and they
risked coming under even doser police scrutiny.
Another obstacle to obtaining accurate information
is the fact that many of the présentations hâve since
been forgotten, especially if an artist, who had been
particularly active in this area, died in the meantime
and if no studies of his or her oeuvre hâve been
published yet (this is one of the reasons why Robert
Cyprich’s international activities remain unexplored).
Other documents, particularly catalogues of artists’
solo exhibitions published after 1989, do not lend
themselves to the purposes of this study because the
information they contain is incomplète: they may
refer to an artist’s participation in a spécifie event but
the absence of a catalogue makes it impossible to re-
construct the artistic context of the présentation (i.e.
a list of exhibiting artists) or its social, organizational
and institutional context. Given the fact that several
artists of the period under discussion operated both
on the official as well as the unofficial art scene, it
is not always possible to tell what form their par-
ticipation took, whether in each particular instance
17 The timeframe is based on the fact that Charter ‘77 was
prepared in the autumn of 1976 although it was not made
public until January 1977.
18 Symposion ‘74, publisher and place of publication not stated,
1974, in private ownership.
19 J. Zelibskâ—Le goût du paradis. [Exhib. Cat.J Introduction by P.
RESTANY. Paris : Galerie — expositions Jean Gilbert Jozon,
1973, unnumbered pages.
their attendance had been approved and organized
through official channels or whether they had organ-
ized their participation in the foreign event individu-
ally, through private contacts. While conceding that
the reasons listed above make it impossible to corne
up with a complété list of international activities, we
can nevertheless highlight some of the exhibitions
that meet the criteria of the present study: i.e. where
the works appeared abroad without the assistance of
official institutions designed to organize international
présentations of Contemporary visual art.
Some artists active on our alternative, and later the
unofficial scene, found their way to Paris where, to-
wards the end of the preceding decade, Alex Mlynárčik
had created a base not only for his own work but also
for the works of his colleagues. Thus it was in Paris,
at the Jean-Gilbert Jozon Gallery, that Jana Želibská
unveiled her installation “A Taste of Paradise” in
December 1973 [Fig. 1], She shared the news with her
colleagues by means of a collective poster entitled Sym-
posion ‘74 and published in sami^datY During his visit
to the Slovák resort of Rajecké Teplice in the autumn
of 1973,19 Pierre Restany wrote a slender catalogue
for an installation that.Želibská had shown at the Pans
Youth Piennale in 1972, having personally and without
official assistance delivered it a year earlier, declaring
it to customs officiais as a theatre set.20
Alex Mlynárčik, an artist who, since his first visit
to Paris in the mid-1960s, maintained lively contacts
of both a personal and artistic nature with the French
capital, did not exhibit at the Youth Biennale in the
years covered by this study. His work, however,
had already been well received abroad: in 1973 he
participated in the Omaha Flow System exhibition as
well as the InternationalPost-conceptualArfExhibition ïsi
Helsinki and Stockholm. Two years later he took part
in an exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem
under the title RecyclingF
20 According to a personal conversation with the author (Sep-
tember 2001), it was Jindřich Chalupecký who drew the
attention of the French part of the Paris Youth Biennale (Raoul
Moulin) to Zelibskà’s work.
21 RESTANY, P: Ailleurs. Alex Mylnáriik. Paris — Bratislava
1995, p. 239. In a personal conversation with the author,
Alex Mlynárčik could no longer recall who had initiated his
participation in the exhibitions listed above, nor was able to
specify which of his works were shown there. (He was not
213