The Sport in Art online gallery now exhibits new original art you can hang on your wall at home. Together with the curator Petr Volf, we have established cooperation with another eight contemporary artists and expanded the collection inspired by sport and motion. Now we'd like to introduce the work of the first four artists: Alena Anderlová, Ondřej Kohout, David Mazanec and Jitka Petrášová. Each painting is an original.
Alena Anderlová
She's the first lady of Czech fine art inspired by sport, says the curator Petr Volfabout Alena Anderlová. She has already painted several extensive cycles of figurative canvases portraying this theme. Figures are her main vehicles of expression; she paints mostly animals or people from urban, rural or sport environments. Her work unites a sense of color composition and light work, through which she breathes into her characters a kind of magical aura. You can find her pieces in private collections in the Czech Republic and around the world. She lives in Klatovy and collaborates with galleries in neighboring Germany. In our online gallery, you can pick from her twenty-one works.
She created an extensive cycle Atleti (in English Athletes) in 2013, in which she captured high and long jumpers at different stages of a jump. It's a convincing presentation of complex movement coordination, experience, concentration and tension or relaxation in the faces of athletes.
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This set is not an isolated instance; Alena Anderlová continuously focuses on sports theme – an example could be the atmosphere of stadium environments which she’s captured in several of her cycles.
Petr Volf comments on her work very poetically: „Alena Anderlová came up with an uncommon portrayal of a modern ritual in her series of paintings in which cars or motorcycles are speeding in the ghostly environment of a rural rally. As the lights sweep across the murky landscape, the racers must be careful not to run down hares, which are in fact becoming the prey without initially intending to: the race turns into a fight on multiple fronts. In her painting Face to Face, a motorcyclist passes a turn but the cow mirroring on the shield of his helmet seems too close to avert the imminent disaster. Although we can see only a sole moment, the painter's method allows us to clearly see what is bound to happen, too.”
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On top of that, our website houses her works inspired by rowing, skiing, running, skateboarding and other sports, too. Click HERE to see all the paintings.
We had the pleasure to work wih Alena Anderlová on the shows Jizerská 50 and ROW ROW ROW in Prague, and at the World Rowing Championships in Račice. That was also the incentive for an interview where she speaks, among other things, about her relationship to sports or the painting process. You can read it HERE.
Ondřej Kohout
„Ondřej Kohout sneaks into his paintings elements of sarcastic, very intelligent, yet not shallow humor, so his works don't become illustrated anecdotes. Take his painting titled Běžci slepě věřící svému startérovi (in English Runners Blindly Trusting Their Starter): he points out that excessive performance focus and boundless trust in the rules can lead to fatal consequences. This applies not only to athletes, but also to ordinary life, twofold," says the curator Petr Volf about his favorite Czech painter.
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Ondřej Kohout is a Czech-Austrian painter and scenographer. He signed Charter 77 in 1978 and was forced into exile in Austria a few years later, where he still lives today. As Volf mentioned, his mostly figurative work is permeated by humor, irony, and absurd poetics. He finds inspiration in sports motifs which gradually turn into studies of movement. Tribute to physicality, body in motion, vigorous brush strokes, defining oneself against the decorative concept of a painting – these are the basic characteristics of Kohout's artistic expression. He's had countless exhibitions throughout Central Europe.
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Ondřej Kohout, fascinated by movement, created an immense number of paintings inspired by sport performances: from the long jump and golf to the Spartakiades. As of now, in the Sport in Art gallery you can choose from five original oil paintings.
David Mazanec
David Mazanec is a painter of the contemporary young generation. He graduated from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ostrava under prof. Daniel Balabán. His work is true to mainly large-format canvases whose geometric figures in clear rhythmization and order might resemble codes in an encrypted message. They act gesturally in contrast to their abstract background. David Mazanec's paintings always rely on active imagination, motion, situational action, and color.
The artist exhibits both in the Czech Republic and abroad. You might have encountered his work not only in galleries, but also e.g. in one of Prague's neighborhoods Hostivař, where he created a grand mural titled Plav! (in English Swim!), which narrates about the cyclicity of life through swimming strokes.
This sport also inspired his acrylic painting Voda (in English Water), where we watch several jumpers jumping headfirst into a fountain. Together they form a geometric pattern gushing out of it. Cyclicality is a motif often recurring in his paintings. However, the author himself doesn't see it in a bad light: "I'm not a fatalist, although I realize that in life there are a few things that are virtually given and inevitable. What is certain is that things have always been, are and certainly will be repeated. Cyclicality is perceived mostly negatively because of its predeterminateness and the resulting lack of freedom; I try to seek hope in it. Hope for a free breath before the next stroke.”
Jitka Petrášová
Jitka Petrášová's natural vehicle of expression is figurative painting. In her work, she mainly copes with her own formative experiences from childhood and adolescence. In her most extensive painting cycle up to these days titled Sbírka sportovců (in English Collection of Athletes), which firstly emerged from a memory of traumatic P.E. classes or a not very successful career as a competitive swimmer (voluntarily ended in primary school), she explores the environment of (top) sport – which is far from her nature – with ironic detachment and unfeigned interest.
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Petrášová's paintings bear significant spontaneous handwriting. Gestures and multi-layered ferocious colors awaken strong emotions in a person only a few seconds after encountering the canvas. Whether we are watching jockeys on enraged racehorses, sumo wrestlers, pole dancers or bobsledders, we see a clearly indicated movement recounted in a simple abbreviation, which we cannot deny the dynamics we experience in sport. We collaborated with the author on the exhibition ROW ROW ROW, which has brought, in addition to the above-mentioned sports disciplines, her works inspired by rowing.
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Jitka Petrášová graduated from the Czech Academy of Fine Arts in České Budějovice and she’s been studying painting since 2019 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in the studio of Robert Šalanda. Her paintings appear in a number of private collections in the Czech Republic, Belgium, France and Germany as well as in gallery collections (e.g. Aleš South Bohemian Gallery).
In her interview for Sport in Art from the spring of 2022, Jitka talks not only about her relationship to sport, but also about other aspects of her work, such as what kind of music she likes the most when painting. You can read it HERE.
