Prague, Dec 17 (CTK) – Czech painter Pavel Brazda, a solitary artist who had to work in isolation for many years, died at the age of 91 on Sunday, his grandson Simon Trlifaj told CTK.
Despite repression during the communist era, Brazda heralded new trends in world art such as pop art, magical realism and outsider art. He is considered to be one of the most significant Czech painters of the late 20th century.
Brazda started painting in the 1940s. After the 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia, he was expelled from Prague’s fine art academy for political reasons. Together with his wife, painter and sculptor Vera Novakova, they created art in isolation for the next four decades. To earn his living Brazda, he worked as a decorative artist and coal boiler operator.
His artistic isolation ended only after the fall of the communist regime in the early 1990s.
“I like to stay on the periphery of the artistic scene. I don’t need to be in the main stream, have exhibitions at the official places,” he said some time ago.
In 2008, he received a medal of merit for art from Czech President Vaclav Klaus. In 2013, he returned the state decoration in protest against Klaus’s opposition to the European Union, strong affinity to Russia and sharp statements about late President Vaclav Havel.
Brazda was a relative of poet Josef Palivec and writers Karel Capek and Josef Capek.
He called his artistic style “hominism” – art about people and for them. He was interested in city life and city folklore and he liked to say a city was like a live organism.
His crucial works include the apocalyptic Five Minutes Before the End of the World (1945-53), The Monster Waits, the Monster has Time self-portrait (1949) Forgotten to Shave, Haven’t You (1949), the Racers series (1956-58), and the Human Comedy cycle (2000-2017).
