Karel Nepraš

Karel Nepraš (2 April 1932 – 5 April 2002) was a Czech sculptor, draughtsman, graphic artist and professor at Prague Academy. Already in the 1960s, Nepraš became one of the most prominent Czech artists thanks to his ability to master new materials, techniques and technologies and creatively exploit them. His original work has also been recognized abroad. Through playfulness, subversive irony and bitter humour, he has kept himself free from pathos, pretension and any ideological cliché. Nepraš's work is often classified as part of the so-called Czech Grotesque, which partly overlapped with New Figuration, but the term was rather a substitute for such notions as alienation, absurdity and manipulation, which were unacceptable to the then communist regime. With the rapid deterioration of state cultural policy under normalization, the grotesque acted as a distinctly intellectual commentary on reality. According to art historian Jan Kříž, there are only a few sculptors in the world who could so perfectly connect the tragicomedy of human existence with the tragicomedy of general history.

The period of normalization he experienced in difficult existential conditions, without the possibility to exhibit and in seclusion. He received recognition again only after the fall of the communist regime, when he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. A number of prominent personalities emerged from the Karel Nepraš School Socha 1, such as the sculptors Paulina Skavova, Martina Hozová, Klára Klose and Markéta Korečková, the sculptors Karel Bartáček, Zdeněk Šmíd, Vít Novotný, Ján Macko and the painter MICL. In addition to teaching students, Nepraš devoted himself intensively to his own work and is considered one of the most original representatives of New Figuration.

Life

Karel Nepraš was born on 2 April 1932 in Prague into the family of a bank clerk. Thanks to his art teacher at the town school, who encouraged his interest in drawing and advised him, he saw several exhibitions before the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état. In 1948–1951, he graduated from the Secondary Industrial Ceramic School in Prague, where Bedřich Dlouhý also studied. In 1952 he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in the sculpture studio of Prof. Jan Lauda, and in 1958 he graduated as an academic sculptor.

Before the war, Jan Lauda was a leading representative of so-called social art and had excellent training (pupil of Jan Štursa, shared studio with Otto Gutfreund). He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and in 1951 he was awarded the State Prize of Klement Gottwald for his bust of V. I. Lenin. Karel Nepraš was a prominent student of Lauda, and his professor actively protected him, giving him repeatedly excellent marks in sculpture. He also saved him from being expelled from Academy when Nepraš repeatedly failed exams in Marxism-Leninism and Lauda convinced the examining comrade to give him at least a C. At the end of his studies he defended Nepraš's diploma thesis - an unconventional monument to the pioneer of aeronautics E. Čihák. From the practice of the ceramicist and the principles of the Lauda school on the necessity to maintain the solid construction of the sculpture, Nepraš took away the inclination towards a convex shape, which "is the vault that holds the space"

Šmidra group

In the oppressive atmosphere of the communist regime of the 1950s, the general spying and the emphasis on teaching Marxism–Leninism and socialist realism at the Academy, personal friendships and private gatherings of students were more important than school. Nepraš and his friends were aware that they stood completely outside official art, and prank was a necessary common self-defence.

Together with his classmates Jan Koblasa, Bedřich Dlouhý and musicians Rudolf Komorous, Libor Pešek and Jan Klusák, he founded the Club (in the manner of English gentlemen's clubs), which prepared a joint Dadaist event of artists, actors and musicians Malmuzherciáda (abbreviated in English would be: PaintActMus-ade) in the Club of Unitarians (Dec. 19, 1954). Nepraš exhibited the painting Green Mother Destroying Her Child. The painter Ladislav Placatka and the composer Jan Bedřich also took part and a joint composition Eine kleine Dadamusik (with the phrases Duchaminulost, Duchapřítomnost, Duchabudoucnost) was performed. After this event some left the "Club" and the remaining members - Karel Nepraš, Jan Koblasa, Bedřich Dlouhý and Rudolf Komorous continued to meet as Šmidra group (Jaroslav Vožniak joined in 1955). In 1955, Nepraš participated as a designer in the performance Two Ballets at Ledebur Gardens (Malá Strana), for which the libretto wrote Jan Koblasa.

In 1957 they prepared a one-day exhibition on Střelecký ostrov together with invited literary artists (Václav Havel, Jiří Paukert, Milena Tobolová) and professional musicians (Modern Jazz Quintet of Eugen Jegorov, Rudolf Dašek, Milan Kostohryz, etc. ) as a composed evening, with the presentation of private artworks.

The activities of the Šmidra group, in addition to regular meetings, recessional events and formalised rituals with fragmentary collaborative literary activities, continued after they finished studies at the Prague Academy. Nepraš brought a performative playful talent to the club and cultivated the scope of drawing. In 1958, the club, inspired by spontaneous idea of Bedřich Dlouhý formed "Šmidra brass band". None of the participants had a musical background (except Koblasa, who won a singing competition). Nepraš played the flugelhorn and was privately taught for about three months by a trumpet player from the conservatory. Later he played the violin. Their joint performance was also a distinctive 1959 production of Arsonist's daughter by Josef Kajetán Tyl and a parody of the official rituals of the time - The Ceremonial Academy of the Šmidra group in memory of the poet Václav Svoboda Plumlovský at the Reduta Jazz Club in 1960 (with the participation of Hana Purkrábková, Aleš Veselý, Kateřina Černá, Čestmír Janošek, Jan Klusák, Petr Lampl, Bohumír Mráz). In the same year, the amateur film Šmidra's Magician's Lantern was made.

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「Karel Nepraš」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。