Vladimír Janoušek (30 January 1922 – 8 September 1986) was a Czech sculptor and painter. He was founding member of the UB 12 group and husband of the sculptor Věra Janoušková. In the 1960s he was a sought-after collaborator of architects. Janoušek almost never abandoned figuration,Josef Hlaváček, The Last Works of Vladimír Janoušek, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 1990, p. 14 but the moving parts of his sculptures represent a radicalisation of form that breaks away from the traditional concept of sculpture. The originality and conceptual approach gives his sculpture a European significance.Šetlík J, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 1990, p. 5 He is one of the few Czech sculptors listed in the New Dictionary of Modern Sculpture, published in Paris in 1970.Zemina J, Vladimír Janoušek - Drawings 1993, 1 folded sheet After Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and so called normalization he lost the possibility to exhibit and became one of the most persecuted Czech artists.Karel Srp, Variabily Vladimíra Janouška, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 1990, p. 13Karel Srp, Into the dark, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, p. 485
Life Vladimír Janoušek was born in Ždírnice, in the family of Vojtěch Janoušek (1895-1984), a legionary and officer of the Czechoslovak army, who was in charge of building Czechoslovak border fortifications. His younger brother Jiří also served in the army. Vladimír Janoušek's cousin is the art historian Jaromír Zemina. Janoušek's uncle Otakar Zemina (1899-1990) was a painter and a teacher at the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno.Zemina J, GUBJ Klatovy 1998, unpaginated His grandfather was Karel Otakar Svoboda, a head teacher in Kalná Voda, violinist and amateur painter, friend of František Kaván.Karel Srp (ed.), Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, p. 395 Thanks to his youth spent in the countryside, Vladimír Janoušek perceived the functionality of folk architecture, the local pottery and stonemasonry tradition, as well as the sculptures in nearby Kuks and Hořice.
At a young age, he was caught up in the events of the war – the secession of the Sudetenland, relocation and later a long forced labour deployment in Nazi Germany. He began his secondary school studies at the gymnasium in Trutnov (Prof. of drawing Bedřich Mudroch, member of Umělecká beseda) and finished them in 1940 in Úpice.Jaromír Zemina, Ze vzpomínek, in: Janoušek V, Proč to dělám právě tak / From Memories, in: Janoušek V, Why I'm doing it this way, 1995, unpaginated In Úpice, he attended lectures on theatre organized by the Central Union of Theatre Amateurs. In 1940-1941 he was an apprentice at a construction firm in Hostinné and was considering studying architecture. It was only a graduate course (1941) in Hořice, a town with a long tradition of stonemasonry and sculpture, that have helped him decide between his interest in architecture and the study of sculpture. After a year spent at the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno, in 1942 he started studying at the School of Arts and Crafts in Prague under Prof. Karel Dvořák. His studies were interrupted by forced labour deployment and until the end of the war he worked at a sawmill in Oels, Silesia. Janoušek was friends with Ladislav Zívr from the 1940s, with whom he shared his passion for the work of Otto Gutfreund.
After the war he failed the entrance exams to the Academy, but was accepted to the studio of Prof. Josef Wagner at the Academy of Applied Arts. His classmates, apart from his future wife Věra Havlová, were Zdeněk Palcr, Miloslav Chlupáč, Olbram Zoubek and Eva Kmentová. Janoušek's sculptural style was particularly influenced by the late work of Otto Gutfreund and before 1948 also by the Prague exhibitions of Western European art (Baltasar Lobo, Picasso, 1946 Constant Permeke, 1947) and the work of Henry Moore, from the art theorists especially by the reflections of Bohumil Kubišta and the lectures of prof. Václav Nebeský. In the years 1945–1947, he simultaneously studied art history at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University (prof. Jan Patočka, Antonín Matějček, Jan Květ, Václav Mencl).Karel Srp, Člověk nad propastí / Man Above the Abyss, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, p. 38 After 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état he refused to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and for one year became a member of the Czechoslovak Social Democracy.Karel Srp, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, p. 240 He finished his studies in 1950 with his graduation thesis - a monumental sculpture of Master Jan Hus, of which only a photograph has survived.Šetlík J, 1962, p. 7 From 1951 he was a member of the Umělecká beseda and the Czechoslovak Union of Artists (until 1970).Karel Srp (ed.), 2020, p. 397
In 1948, during his studies, he married the sculptor Věra Havlová and spent two semesters with her at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia. More than teaching, he enjoyed their joint trips to the Bulgarian countryside, from where he brought back a number of drawings with folk themes. The Janoušek couple acquired their first studio in a workshop with an adjoining courtyard in the former Smíchov prison in Malátova Street. It became a place of meetings and exchanges of opinions of Janoušek's generational fellowsŠetlík J, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 1990, p. 6 and younger artists. Among his friends were Čestmír Kafka, Hugo Demartini, Jitka Svobodová, Stanislav Kolíbal or Rudolf Uher.Jiří Šetlík, K podobizně Vladimíra Janouška / To the likeness of Vladimír Janoušek, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, s. 360 In 1964, they moved to their own studio built according to Vladimír Janoušek's design and Josef Hrubý's project on a vacant plot in Prague-Košíře. In the 1970s, when their Prague studio began to be monitored by the StB, they set up a rural studio in a former school in Vidonice near Pecka.Jiří Šetlík, K podobizně Vladimíra Janouška / To the likeness of Vladimír Janoušek, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, p. 363
Janoušek became an unnamed spokesman for the UB 12 group in the 1960s, and he communicated his views on sculpture in interviews for magazines and in his own articles. He was critical of the "Brussels style" of Expo 58, which he regarded as superficial decorativismVladimír Janoušek, interview with A. Kusák, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, p. 377 and was untouched by informel and the principle of the "inner model". He set himself against the sculptors exhibiting in 1964 at the Nová síň Gallery (Koblasa, Sekal, Veselý, Nepraš, etc. - Exhibition D), which resulted in mutual hostility lasting several years.Karel Srp, Man Above the Abyss, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, pp. 41–43 In the late 1960s, he was the first sculptor to exhibit solo at the Nová síň Gallery. Jiří Kotalík invited him to become the head of the sculpture studio at the Prague Academy,Jiří Šetlík, K podobizně Vladimíra Janouška / Towards the Image of Vladimír Janoušek, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, p. 362 but after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the uproar over his sculpture Threat of War at Expo '70, this was no longer an option.
In 1954, Vladimír Janoušek participated in the Venice Biennale.Miroslav Míčko, Our participation in the Venice Biennale, Výtvarné umění 5, 1954, p. 8 He was invited to the Expo 58 in Brussels, Expo 67 in Montreal and Expo 70 in Osaka. There he had a large sculptural installation The Threat of War, which was a response to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was then subjected to political persecution and was not allowed to exhibit officially until the late 1980s. Exceptions were the 1982 exhibitions in Orlová and in the unofficial exhibition hall of the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Czech Academy of Sciences. Other prepared exhibitions at the Sculpture Gallery in Hořice (1980, 1987), the Stavoprojekt Gallery in Brno (1986), for which a catalogue was published, and the Podkrkonošské Museum in Nová Paka (1987) were banned.Josef Hlaváček: Vladimír Janoušek, Brno 1986 For principled reasons, he refused to participate in collective exhibitions organised by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on various anniversaries.Památce Vladimíra Janouška / In Memory of Vladimír Janoušek, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, s. 385 His sculptures are a tragic testimony of a lonely man who projected into them an obsessive feeling of a never-ending dialogue with a self-proclaimed investigator.
In 1952-1970 he was a member of the Union of Czechoslovak Artists and until 1960 of the so-called Umělecká beseda centre in Prague, then in 1960 a founding member of the creative group UB 12, which was formed by the secession of Umělecká beseda members. He worked together with his wife Věra Janoušková in a joint studio in Prague-Košíře, from 1975 also in Vidonice. Vladimír Janoušek suffered from diabetes and in the mid-1980s the disease complicated his life considerably, but he was finally broken by the ban on his exhibition in Brno in 1986, which he had carefully prepared. Soon afterwards he fell ill with a virus, lost the will to live and after a week of treatment died on 8 September 1986 in Prague.Šetlík J, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 1990, p. 10 He is buried together with Věra Janoušková in Byšičky. The tombstone using Janoušek's statue The Last Fall was designed by Czech architect Alena Šrámková.Museum Kampa: D2
All works of the couple are now managed by the Věra and Vladimír Janoušek Foundation, founded by Věra Janoušková.Věra and Vladimír Janoušková Foundation
Work Professor Josef Wagner influenced early sculptures of Vladimír Janoušek, based on harmonious shapes and a lyrical subtext (Sculpture for Magician's Lantern, 1958–1959). In his view the modernity of art was in distinction from visible reality, without denying its validity.Karel Srp, Man Above the Abyss, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, p. 36 He rejected the vulgar descriptiveness of Socialist Realism and sought as a starting point the generalization of human types and the abstracting order of compositions originating in the Renaissance. In the second half of 1960s, he still turned his interest to the elements and Universe ( The Sun, 1964–1965, Sailboat, 1969, Piece of Earth, Cloud, 1971, Fire, 1972),Karel Srp, Elements, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, p. 479 but the crushing pressure of the Communist regime, which was impossible to resist, created a state of permanent overload and a sense of abyss and fall with no way back. In the construction of his sculptures, he combines expressiveness of conception with the momentum of form. The subject of Janoušek's sculptures became a struggle and deviation from the authentic centre of gravity and established social rules, where man ceased to be the measure of values, and inevitability of fall and death. Over the years, also in connection with his severe diabetes, the feeling of the fatality of human destiny and its finality and hopelessness prevailed in his work.Karel Srp, Man over the Abyss, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, p. 32
1955–1960 Since his student years, Janoušek was attracted to spatial realisations, which he understood as an aesthetic element that organizes and characterizes space with its form and implications. In the 1950s, in addition to outstanding sculptural portraits (Wenceslaus Hollar, 1952, František Xaver Šalda, 1953, Václav Talich, Karel Havlíček Borovský, 1955–1957),Karel Srp, Man Above the Abyss, in: Vladimír Janoušek, 2020, pp. 46–47 Janoušek created also reliefs and numerous studies of sculptures for integration into architecture. Thanks to his cooperation with architects, he was commissioned to create four reliefs for the new milk drying plant in Zábřeh (1955). According to Janoušek's design, V. Bartůněk made a large sandstone relief for the House of Fashion on Wenceslas Square (1956). The relief deals primarily with the internal links of the figures and their relationship to the architecture, and is characterised by smooth transitions of convex volumes and harmony of form. Other reliefs were created by the Janoušek couple for a housing estate in Kladno and a school in Ostrava-Poruba.