Jiří Vincenc Slavíček – Info

In 1978 – when he was 23 years old – Jiří Vincenc Slavíček left Prague, the city of his birth, and fled to the Federal Republic of Germany. There he studied at the Frankfurt Academy of Fine Art (Städelschule) from 1980 until 1986 under Prof. Raimer Jochims.
His early paintings are characterised by figurative components and elements expressing criticism of politics. In 1989 after the aesthetic upheaval in his work, his painting became more abstract. Slavíček perceives what a setting reveals about Nature and reproduces that insight in his work with a great deal of artistic reflection. Thus, he creates emotionally expressive pictures of flowers, forests and grasses using detached and representational components.
In many of the painter’s works, he employs the oil painting technique of scraping back, whereby he partially removes the uppermost layer of oil paint in order to reveal concealed areas underneath. In this way, he achieves a three-dimensional presence within his painting. That is because Slavíček’s real objective is to make the seemingly hidden and suggestive aspects of Nature visible to every viewer.
As I. Naumann, PhD, remarked – Slavíček’s method and approach are exclusively those of a painter. He likes to take advantage of all of the refined tricks that a painter has at his disposal, but he never lets himself be carried away by them. In his hands, the two dimensions of a picture expand to include two additional dimensions even though he does not use the technique of illusionist painting. So he is capable of painting “Raum und Zeit”, i.e. space and time (1999). The reason is that he does not imitate the nature of a landscape, which constitutes the most powerful experience for him: instead he acts in harmony with it, in the midst of its greatest creative potential and its existence.
In the meantime, Galerie Barbara von Stechow and the artist enjoy a co-operation relationship that goes back 15 years.