Texts about author

Jan Kapusta / What We Know

The sculptor's struggle for a distinctive language of their work, conducted over decades, can be arduous, embarrassing, and only genuine, consistent characters who do not rely too much on their own sculptures to support them can achieve demonstrable results. Then, of course, such effort never rests on mere ideas or wit, but requires a theme, an idea, patient engagement and time. Sculpture, historically speaking, has always dealt primarily with the human figure, alongside its participation in architecture. Even today, naturally, the human being, their real and intellectual world, remains an open theme for the artist.

Jiří Středa belongs to the artists who soon realized this old truth. He completed his sculpture studies in the early 1980s, when official socialist and conventional sculpture was unconditionally favored. Everything else was denied. Together with his generational peers, he strove to orient himself in the development of post-war sculpture and understand the unofficially valued generation studying right after the war, which they idealized. But from the mid-1980s onwards, they gradually became more familiar with this chapter of Czech art firsthand. Some of them found that it wasn't quite it after all, that sculpture had gotten lost somewhere, and they began to search for a path to it again. Some followed domestic legends, others looked out into the world. There were also those who tried it their own way.

Jiří Středa renounced the present. In European art museums, he examined prehistoric, ancient, medieval sculptures, as well as modern works, and investigated the principles of their construction. He turned to the sculptural order, which, however, can no longer be studied in today's art. He realized how the violation of basic rules of sculptural art points precisely to the significance of those rules for the field. He recognized how they are essential, for example, for conveying a message briefly and effectively, how rules are needed to maintain and preserve the firmness, clarity, lucidity of the sculpture, its ability to "be" and endure. He clarified the reason to care about the figure, what to want from the plasticity of sculpture and what to express through sculpture. He further concluded that convention in sculpture must be avoided; he recognized it in contemporary realistic and non-figurative tendencies both ending in the bag of monotony. He dismissed object and installation because they stand outside sculpture.

Jiří Středa declares that he makes sculptures. The subject of his sculptures is the figure. He needs to shape thoughts, beauty, waiting, desires, fears, joy and fear. Life's impulses seep into the stones, from which one can almost sense and discern a magical function. These sculptural embodiments are silent, calm, fragile in content, sensual, contemplative, enveloped in lyrical melancholy, mystery.

Jiří Středa is a thoughtful seeker of vital forms. He cannot be convicted of intellectual and formal emptiness. The rational and emotional background is formulated in the positions of figures, in their movements, gestures. The intellectual and emotional directness, clarity and certainty of the sculptures harmonize with their solid volumetric and formal centricity. The smooth surfaces of monolithic stone and metal figures strengthen sculptural concentration, the merging of the spiritual with the formal, and isolate the sculpture's own world from its surroundings. In shallow, economical relief, figures emerge from blocky forms to the surface. From the rich corporeality and complexion of the sculptures, one can tell how much loving and concentrated care was devoted to them. They are thought through with responsibility. The calm of the smooth monumental form is complemented by sober detail and drawing, the real permeates the general, we also notice the decorative aspect. Jiří Středa's sculptures, autonomous from every angle of view and representing the whole, are a comprehensive treatment of matter, idea, intimacy, sensuality and beauty. The sculptures that the sculptor has made in the last ten years mostly in tuff, marble, sandstone, diorite and bronze, also resonate with the beauty of the material. He likes to choose stone for its aesthetic properties. When he works on stones, he perceives them as partners worthy of respect, who will not "allow" him to make a mistake. They would reveal conceptual and artistic indecisiveness and helplessness.

Sculptor Jiří Středa considers it necessary to emphasize order and stability in his work as fundamental, interconnected life and creative principles. He has something to say, he doesn't have to avoid responsibility and pander to the frivolous world out of mental need, and he is allowed to devote himself to real sculpture. His work is proof of this and should be taken seriously.

-Jan Kapusta-

Dušan Brozman / The Figure

Středa's figures are characterized by capturing the human being at a key moment when emotional turmoil culminates in the symbolic expression of body posture and gesture. For figurative sculptors who focus on the human soul, on human sensitivity to the world and God, on how humans perceive their own existence, such concentration on a single moment is natural.

In Středa's work we find motifs such as expectation, awakening, desire, human closeness, doubt, curiosity or shame. He expresses them in acts and busts. At the same time, he strips the figure of any attributes that would enrich it with narrative or symbolizing connections. They would divert concentration from the power of gesture. The figures are not anchored in the everyday life of a specific time by their nudity. The bodies and faces of Středa's figures are idealized, psychology and individuality are suppressed and together with the missing pupils evoke timelessness.

From the early sculpture Covered Torso (1986) we can infer that the starting point for the sculptor's work was the torsos of Josef Wagner, inspired by the shapes of pebbles and rocks, close to Josef Šíma's paintings from the 1930s. Středa did not artistically continue in this language. Only the pits of splitting tuff, created when chiseling some early works, evoke the weathering of stone by the tooth of time. The artist later exceptionally returned to the classical theme of the torso.

The corporeality of his figures is informed by both the work of customs officer Rousseau and Picasso's classicist paintings around 1920. Behind the composition of early sculptures, the distribution of masses and their rhythm, one can feel Henry Laurens, Miloslav Chlupáč and Zdeněk Palcr. Unlike his predecessors, however, Středa does not abandon the boundary of naturalism towards sharp edges or the decomposition of the human body into more or less autonomous wholes.

What We Know, Morning

In 2001 he completed a standing male figure in life size and called it What We Know. He emphasizes the vertical flow of the body, limbs and outline. This direction is met by the fact that the figure does not stand in contrapposto, which would set it in motion into axes oriented horizontally, as we know from Greek figures or also from Aristide Maillol. At the same time, Středa opens the figure into space in a specific way, the kouros-like stepping forward provides the figure with firm stability. The legs form the frame of a mighty sharp spike, whose upward direction is supported both by the adjacent left arm merging with the outline, and the back only gently undulating outline line. Only the male genitals form a gentle accent to this direction, enlivening it with their opposition. The movement from the legs upward finds an abrupt stop at the elbow of the raised right arm, but only to soon and more evidently culminate in a double way; both through the raised index finger and also through the gaze into infinity in the tilted head. Středa's sculpture Doubting Thomas (1995) helps us read this specific hand gesture. The index finger pointing to the sky draws attention to the world that transcends our earthly experiences. In the history of visual culture we find it in religious art. It is Christ's gesture at the moment when Thomas's gaze and attention is lost in earthly, material matters.

Let's look at another compositional solution of the slightly larger-than-life figure Morning (2010). A woman shields her face from the sunlight. The sculptor portrayed the gesture emphatically, boldly and beautifully: above the breasts generously protrudes into space the angle of bent arms, which together with the palms protect and frame the head and face. As we walk around the sculpture, we perceive her face, covered by joined forearms, in an almost painful expression. Only when moving around the sculpture does it slowly open to our view and change into a somewhat curious and simultaneously shy expression.

All of Středa's sculptures are characterized by pronounced plasticity. The surfaces are convex, taut and smooth, generous shapes calmed and abstracted. Not only is the sculptural handwriting eliminated, but the flow of composition is also not slowed down by details of musculature or hints of skeleton. At the same time, the body structure remains solid. In the effort for plasticity and simplicity of forms, the author also renounced hair. From this whole radiates strong idealization and a special contrast between construction, vital energy and dignity.

When viewed up close, however, the viewer's eye still stops at details: the drawing and plasticity of eyes and lips, the shape of the nose, nipples, male genitals, the rhythms of fingers on hands and feet, or perfectly rounded nail shapes. Even the smallest shape is monumental and Středa devotes the same attention to it as to the whole. Although these details fascinate us and occupy our eye, they comprehensively harmonize with the whole, enliven and accompany it in perfect harmony like piano and violin. The pedestal is gently beveled so that the pull upward is obvious from the base. The little finger of the left and heel of the right foot are located outside it. In this way, the figure carries within itself the memory of the blockiness of the sculptural stone, which is literally transcended here in a decent and enlivening way.

In the Sun

Another great artistic challenge for Středa was the female figure In the Sun (2011). Lying on her back, stretching, the undulating figure richly animated, is deflected to the left side. The raised leg destabilizes her position, to which the balancing right leg responds in gentle touch with the ground. The lively play of arms and palms like on a scale maintains the equilibrium of the entire composition and at the same time shields it from the sun. The taut and rolling body thus seeks and finds its position. This mighty rhythm of the body is accompanied four times five fingers - airy, plastically and graphically rendered like comb teeth, between which the background shows through.

A reclining figure in motion is an exceptional motif in the history of sculpture. We usually encounter the capture of a moment of rest, sleep or death. It was Maillol who in the late 1930s created masterpieces in this sense - his last sculptures Air and River. In the first, a female nude balances on the right side turned to the viewer: one arm and both legs, like three long parallels, three long sounds running longitudinally with the body axis. In the second dramatic work, the mighty female body overturns below the level of the pedestal into depth. It is precisely in the context of these two sculptures that the sensitivity, skill and artistic intelligence of Jiří Středa become clear to us.

Color

Středa works either by the "taille directe" method, i.e. when he chisels directly into stone, or models the sculpture from plaster by adding and grinding. He then casts the plaster model into bronze and patinates it, or casts it into artificial resin. Sometimes he even leaves the sculpture in plaster - in this seemingly transitional material state. The diversity of material also means diversity of surface, gloss or matte and various color shades. It is clear that material and its properties are a challenge for him. In this sense, he undertook his first major experiment when creating the work What We Know. The bronze sculpture has an intense evenly dark green, rather turquoise patina. It is the pronounced color, not only the mentioned parallel of two vertical directions, that has a signal function. For future work, the desire to continue working with color, with this expressive element not quite common for a classical sculptor, is thus initiated.

We encounter such an approach also in the work Morning. The sculpture appears beige-pink in incarnate and yellowish surface of short smooth hair. The Venus mound is watercolor gently emphasized. The last enlivening detail is an almost imperceptible grayish iris. We find no other color accents here. The lips are also emphasized, but only by sensual transitions of light and shadow. How strongly the delicacy of the coloring of this female figure contrasts with the previous example of the bronze man of green patina... Among Středa's other "coloristic" works also belongs the black head Doubting Thomas (2014). The previously processed motif of palms before the face is also found here. In this case, however, shame, surprise and gradual understanding of what is actually happening, what Christ's gesture speaks of, is expressed. The sculpture is made of diorite, a stone used by Egyptian and Sumerian sculptors, whose example is as ubiquitous in Středa's work as Maillol's. The sculptural matter itself and the method of work are a kind of homage to ancient portrait art and its plasticity. Here the author polished the black-and-white grainy and lively stone. In the growth of hair he gave a yellowish tone imbued with the blackness of the stone, and finds its emotional culmination in the covered face with azure-emphasized eyes!

In connection with color, it is essential to briefly mention Středa's drawings. Although they are small in format compared to the carefully thought-out sculptures, they can be surprisingly expressive both in handwriting and in coloring. The difference in the author's approach in these two independent areas of creation casts an interesting light on both.

Středa, Sopko, Čapek

The joint exhibition of Jiří Středa and colorist figuralist Jiří Sopko in 2014 at the Žižkov Atrium pointed to a certain closeness in the motifs and expressive means used by both artists. Since the 1990s, heads and classicizing figures have also been important motifs in Sopko's work, which mediate the existential, superpersonal and timeless human experience. They are looking into their inner selves and perceive the outer world as if in a trance. Through this introspection and concentration on one's own perception, Sopko and Středa are related to Josef Čapek, Jan Zrzavý or Bohumil Kubišta, who during the horrors of World War I painted series of heads in a similar spirit. It is a remarkable Czech tradition.

Actuality

The work of Jiří Středa is not very numerous. Sculptures often arise over several years, maturing slowly. The cause is a natural cautious process - a way of creating undisturbed by affects. However, the author's life circumstances also leave their mark on this way of working. It is connected with the necessity to devote a lot of time to something else as well.

The tradition of the "classicist" way of depicting a person, whether in sculpture or painting, is about five thousand years old. It began in Egypt, acquired its classical form in Greece, passed through Rome in its own peculiar way, and experienced another flourishing in the Renaissance. Since then, it has been indelibly anchored in the depiction of man in our Christian culture. Various waves of neoclassicism testify to this. The last of the greatest sculptors working in this sense was precisely Maillol. The tradition of the classical figure, or at least the effort for it, did not disappear even subsequently despite tendencies towards deformations and fragmentation of form by expressionism, cubism and futurism, or despite non-objectivity and Dadaist anti-art including the object, which stood against sculpture. Here opens a vast field for research and reflection on sculpture and its mission in the modern world...

-Dušan Brozman-