Lot 238

Adriena Šimotová (1926 - 2014) ABOUT CLOSE AND REMOTE (INTERVIEW)

The basic part of Adriena Šimotová's work was a multifaceted work with the essence of image and the possibility of image communication. At the beginning of the 1990s, Adriena Šimotová was just over sixty years old and was at the peak of her creative powers. During the first five years after the Velvet Revolution, she managed to create twenty solo exhibitions, six of them abroad. Her work reflects her desire to experiment with the medium of paper and to create spatially and haptically interesting objects. One of the main themes to which Šimotová paid fundamental attention in her work was man, his physically perceived through the prism of the inner world. She depicted a figure or parts of the human body as a tool, as a language in which to tell the story of the soul. In the list of Šimotová's works, which is part of her extensive monograph from 2006, the sculptures About the near and far are listed under numbers 693 to 695. In the mentioned monograph on pages 160–161 we find a view of the exhibition in Mánes, where Conversation. The original installation of the sculpture was different than it is now. The right figure of the composition was placed on his side directly on the floor. There is also a whole series of photographs by Hana Hamplová from the artist's studio, in which the individual sculptures can be seen in a still unfinished state. In most of the pictures, the left, female figure of the Conversation appears, which is easily recognizable thanks to the distinctive hem on the right shoulder. Three of these images are also published in the catalog of the exhibition About Close and Remote. The photograph in which Šimotová herself sits on a chair next to the statue is particularly impressive.
Without knowing it at the time of its preparation, the exhibition in Mánes was for Adriena Šimotová a point behind one stage and the beginning or foreshadowing of things to come. The texts of the catalog written before this tragic event seem almost prophetic in retrospect. "Alone in space, they revoke reality and the dream, as is true of the author's imagination," writes Jiří Šetlík about the presented sculptures and continues: "It draws from the layers of memory, whose combs intertwine with current experiences and feelings. The ambivalence between the real and the unreal refers to the idea of ​​living shadows from Plato's cave. Fascinated by the magic of the world in question, Adriena turns in pulsating echoes of emotion and thought to the incomprehensible world of the soul, to the entity of the spiritual meaning of events. Adriena Šimotová's work is a redeemed testimony of one human path of our time. Not only by the discovery of creative methods and forms, but above all by the authenticity of the exposed statement about himself and knowledge of the world and life, the painter's work gained an indispensable place in the art of the second half of the 20th century, in Czech and world contexts. She also became her self-portrait. ”Adriena Šimotová received a number of domestic and foreign awards for her work. Her works are represented in, for example, the Vienna Albertina and the Museum der modernen Kunst, the Bibliotheque National and the Center Pompidou in Paris, as well as in Florence, Geneva, Washington, Chicago and many other galleries, as well as in private collections.

Literature: Skřivánek, Jan: Adriena Šimotová 1994, Art + Antiques, May 2021. Page 18.