Zdeněk Beran' (7 March 1937 – 7 November 2014) was a Czech painter, author of objects and installations, professor and vice-rector of Academy of Fine Arts, Prague.
Life Zdeněk Beran attended the Václav Hollar Art School in Prague, Vinohrady district from 1952. Professor Zdeněk Balaš, with whom he studied painting, was a liberal pedagogue and introduced his students to pre-war Czech modernism, represented by Filla, Gutfreund and Kubišta. Beran's high school classmates and friends were Petr Bareš, Eva Bednářová, Kateřina Černá, Antonín Málek, Pavel Nešleha, Lubomír Přibyl or Dana Vachtová.Zdeněk Beran, Napříč časem 1956 - 2006: 50 let od maturity na Výtvarné škole, Uhříněveské muzeum 2006
In 1956–1962 Beran continued his studies in the studio of mural and monumental painting of professor Vladimír Sychra at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He belonged to an informal group that called itself "Somráci" (The Outcasts), together with Antonín Tomalík, Zbyšek Sion, Antonín Málek, some musicians and photographers.Martin Jirous, Zpráva o činnosti Křižovnické školy / Report on the Activities of the Křižovnická škola, Výtvarné umění 6, 1990, p. 53 Group symbolized the anarchism of life attitudes and the autonomy of art as a part of life.abART: Somráci group Student life on the periphery of society centered around cheap tap bars, pubs and snack bars and included frequent changes of housing - in dormitories, in student hostels, in sublets, with friends, in a former laundry in Prague suburb, and finally in an arbour in Troja, which became Beran's studio.Zdeněk Beran, Private Inquiry: in Český informel, 1991, p. 255
After graduating from the academy, he tried unsuccessfully for two years to avoid the compulsory military service by activities that almost amounted to self-destruction, but was eventually drafted anyway.Drvota S, 1973, p. 95
In 1979 he was represented at the exhibition "The Image of Man in European Art since 1945" in AmsterdamJan Kříž, in: Zdeněk Beran 2007, p. 117 and in 1983 at the exhibition "Dessins tchèques du 20e siècle" at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.Dessins tchèques du 20e siècle: artists
In 1989, he received a creative grant from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation.The Pollock Krasner Foundation In 1990, he became a professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and founded the Atelier of Classical Painting Techniques, where two generations of talented students have studied. Most of them later made their mark on the art scene at home and abroad (Karel Balcar, Jan Mikulka, Hynek Martinec, Tomáš Kubík, and others). Since 1990, he has also served as Vice-Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts. Since 2005, he was a member of Mánes Union of Fine Arts, but in 2012, together with some of his former students, he withdrew from the association in protest against its undemocratic practices.Josef Záruba-Pfeffermann, Proces v Mánesově aneb rozklad výtvarných spolků po česku / The Process at Mánes or the Decomposition of Art Associations in the Czech Republic, 2013
Beran's work has been exhibited at several retrospective exhibitions (Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové, 1996, National Gallery in Prague, 2007, Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká, 2007) and together with graduates of his studio at the exhibition Fascination with Reality - Hyperrealism in Czech Painting (Museum of Art, Olomouc, 2017). In the 1990s he participated in exhibitions of Czechoslovak art abroad (Osnabrück, Bonn, Cologne, Reims, Brussels). He is represented in most Czech and Moravian galleries and in prestigious collections abroad (Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, etc.)Zdeněk Beran, represented in Collections
Death Zdeněk Beran died in Prague on 7 November 2014 at the age of 77.Zemřel Zdeněk Beran, malíř a pedagog pražské AVU / Zdeněk Beran, painter and teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, has died, Czech radio Vltava, 10.11.2014
Work The Founders of Modern Czech Art exhibition (Brno, 1957, Prague, 1958) was a groundbreaking event, which for the first time since the February communist coup showed works of Czech expressionism and cubism. In his early work, Beran transformed these impulses and from figures (Lidice, 1958,Patrik Šimon, in: Zdeněk Beran 2007, pp. 191 Design of Figures for the Ceremonial Hall of the Crematorium, graduation thesis 1959–1962, destroyed), portraits and still lifes, by gradually breaking down the artistic form, he eventually became completely detached from visible reality (Hint of Three Figures - Destruction, 1959–1961).
From there, a direct path led to raw material painting, by which Beran, together with Antonín Tomalík, Antonín Málek, Jiří Valenta and Čestmír Janošek, ranked among the most radical representatives of Czech Informel (The End of the Image, 1960). These works, by which the younger generation sharply opposed the art of the time and created a completely new aesthetic based on immediate life experience, were an unconcealed expression of hopeless pessimism.Jindřich Chalupecký, New Art in Bohemia, 1994 According to Beran, the atmosphere of smoky pubs, the yellowish glazes of urine on the asphalt walls of men's toilets, the swampy walls of Prague's peripheries and the dim glimpses of Baroque paintings in the darkened interiors of churches were the sources of inspiration. The perfectly crafted details of Gothic cathedrals, hidden from the observer's eye, gave meaning to seemingly futile efforts.Zdeněk Beran, Report on the Symposium held on the occasion of the exhibition Czech Informel, in: Jana Ševčíková (ed.), Informel. Proceedings of the Symposium, Academy of Fine Arts in Prague 1991
In the first half of the 1960s, Beran was concerned with the representation of the principle of destruction and construction. He disturbed the images formed in low reliefs of sculpturally worked uncoloured masses with gestural interventions. Beran's work is characterized by the barocization of material structures, which manifests itself in the rebellion and opening up of the structure and visualizes the inner momentum and energy of matter (Exhaust, 1965, The Bulge, 1965). The expressiveness of the high raw structures, compressed into a lapidary order, has monumental potency and expresses the drama of individual existence and the pathos of human destiny.Nešlehová M, 1997, p. 154Nešlehová M, The Reversed Face of Modernism, in: Judlová M, 1994, p. 196
From the mid-1960s onwards, Zdeněk Beran turned to the illusionistic verism of classical painting, replacing the drastic naturalism of the matter. Beran's fascination with situations of decay and impermanence is linked to the baroque drama of painting (The pumpkin-shaped head of an individual, 1966), creating bizarrely fanciful relief paintings and objects that foreshadow his subsequent three-dimensional installations (The Discrepancy of Repose , 1968, The Head that Wanted to Look Over the Rope, 1968–1969, Object III - Surrender, 1969).Nešlehová M, Klusák J, in: Zaostalí forever, 2007, pp. 78-79 The Kafkaesque metaphor Attempt at Stability (1968–1969) with the stripped trousers of a vagrant was executed in several versions from drawing and object to illusion painting and exhibited at the 1969 la Biennale des jeunes artistesINHA: 1959–1985, through the prism of the Paris Biennale in Paris.Jan Kříž, in: Zdeněk Beran, 2007, pp. 118 The artist moves from an intimate expression to an artistic communication that attempts to reflect the objective reality of which he himself is a part and to define the meanings contained therein.Jan Kříž, in: Zdeněk Beran, 2007, p. 119
Beran's work after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia reflects the trauma of life (Object III, Surrender, 1969), which is constantly renewed by direct confrontation with reality. He composes scenes in which fragments of discarded and devastated objects create a world of pseudo-movement in deliberately unpleasant and ugly groupings, evoking associations linked to physical threat, illness and extinction.Petr Wittlich, Baroque Lessons, Fine Arts 6, 1990, p. 5Vlastimil Tetiva, Reality and Illusion, AJG Hluboká nad Vltavou 1993, p. 8
In 1970–1971, in his basement studio in Karlín, he created a large-scale installation Rehabilitation Ward of Dr.Dr.Psychiatrist MUDr Stanislav Drvota psychologically examined a total of 25 artists born in the period 1923–1942, classified them according to several typological scales and attempted to correlate their personality with some aspects of their works. The result was the study Personality and Creation (Avicenum 1973), which, among other things, published some of the works of artists who were no longer allowed to exhibit during the normalization period The theme reflects the crisis of humanity and the catastrophe of human existence, exposed to violence, brutality and cruelty, when people become torsos and cripples. There is an element of positive humour in the work, as the torsos in hospital beds are so unwell that rehabilitation is out of the question. Jan Kříž referred to this condition, in which a person, when confronted with a crippling situation, can pose as dead or paralyzed, as "crippling mimicry", or "responsive crippling."Jan Kříž, Výtvarné umění 6, 1990, p. 17 The installation could not be exhibited publicly during the normalization period and since 1971 was only available to interested parties privately in Beran's studio. It was not until 1992 that part of it became an object in the exhibition of Czech art for the International Association of Art Critics Congress in Prague. In 1994, the objects were transported to the grounds of the Bredov castle near Lemberk and buried in an excavated pit. After seven years they were exhumed and their ruins exhibited in the National Gallery in Prague.Jiří Fiala, Exhumation Rehabilitation, Vesmír 81, 2002/6, p. 358
Drawings of intended and unrealized projects play a significant role in Beran's work from the normalization period, when he was not allowed to present his work in public. In the study Earth Project (1972), human torsos, similar to the objects from the Rehabilitation Ward, are installed in spaces defined by rectangular labyrinths dug into the ground like trenches. Other subjects are parades of such torsos (The Friendly Cripples, 1972, Parade of Mobile Smiles, 1974) or a series of various figurative compositions on wheelchairs (Feeding on the Move, 1973, Mobile Cutter, 1974). Beran thematizes human misery - convulsive smiles, mouths open to scream, torn fragments of bodies, faces merging with a wheelchair. Crippling is the theme of Beran's literary text from the 1970s, an absurd grotesque similar to some of Samuel Beckett's texts - The Cripple's May Day (1976).Zdeněk Beran, Mrzákův májový den / The Cripple's May Day (Reconstruction of a Meaningless Event), Výtvarné umění 6, 1990, pp. 18–19
Beran's drawings reflect a multilayered reality as a collage of situations, juxtaposing fragments of the human face with garbage, various unsightly structures, packaging, rubber objects caught in wire mesh,Zdeněk Beran: Zas jeden den / One Day Again, Výtvarné umění 6, 1990, p. 19 or the corpse of a bird with exposed entrails (Winner, 1979, New Installation of Smile, 1977). Contrasting with the expressionist theme is the precise, clear, subtle, veristic drawing, which intensifies the feeling of the wretchedness of human existence (Installation of a Scream, 1979, Installation of a Can, 1979–1980, Study of a Situation, 1981,Skutečnost a iluze / Reality and Illusion, AJG Hluboká nad Vltavou 1993, p. 87 Study of the Head in General Position, 1985). Beran sets a cold mirror to his time and at the same time redeems it by turning horror into beauty and brightness of thought, purity of emotion and decisiveness of will.