Přemysl Martinec (*1957) studied Czech language and art education at the Faculty of Education of Charles University in Prague, but after graduating he worked as a medical orderly. His job in the hospital gave him enough space and inspiration for his work, which gradually became an inner necessity. Since the mid-1980s he has been creating paintings, masks, and ceramic sculptures influenced by surrealism. In his early works, we see ghostly creatures and fragments of dismembered bodies that evoke a disturbing plot. He thus processed not only his experiences from the hospital environment but also his memories of his childhood in a Czech village, where in the summer he often explored garbage dumps and in the winter helped his father, a butcher with pig-slaughtering. These perceptions became the fuel for his work, helping him to release the heavy contents from his subconscious, allowing him to “draw himself out” of them.
He has been keeping an extensive cartoon diary since his youth. Spontaneous records in pencil or pen are chained into successive comic strips, giving the impression of a never-ending story. In his colour drawings of larger formats, more concrete shapes can sometimes be traced. Although they have anthropomorphic or zoomorphic features, any resemblance to reality is “completely accidental” – his creative act is purely automatic. His drawings of recent years are characterized by a mutability without rules and a dynamic of unleashed energy. In the spontaneity of gestures, they depict spatial webs, multigalactic networks floating in the macrocosm, or, conversely, the structures of bone marrow or fungi seen under a microscope.
