The exhibition Eighties: Signal IV, on view at the Telegraph Gallery until March 20, traces the artistic manifestations of the 1980s. At the time, the most important artistic endeavours were taking place outside the official scene. The visual language of selected artists responded to social pressures and global impulses, and new approaches to the medium of image, object and performance were taking shape. Through articles on specific works and artists, we also want to bring the atmosphere and cultural context of this time into focus.
Věra Janoušková (1922-2010), née Havlová, was one of the most significant Czech sculptors of the twentieth century. Her work transcended traditional notions of sculpture and evolved towards experimentation, unorthodox working practices and innovative choice of materials. After an unsuccessful attempt to gain admission to the School of Applied Arts in Prague, she began a one-year apprenticeship at the Vocational School of Stone Sculpture in Hořice, where she honed her drawing and modelling skills. In 1942, she was accepted into the sculpture studio of Karel Dvořák at the School of Applied Arts, where her work began to take shape. After the war she continued her studies with Josef Wagner, where she met future prominent figures of Czech sculpture such as Eva Kmentová, Alina Szapocznikow and Olbram Zoubek. In 1960, she was a founding member of the creative group UB 12 (Václav Bartovský , Václav Boštík, František Burant, Vladimír Janoušek, Věra Janoušková, Jiří John, Stanislav Kolíbal, Jiří Mrázek, Daisy Mrázková, Vlasta Prachatická, Oldřich Smutný, Adriena Šimotová, Alois Vitík and Jiří Šetlík, later joined by Alena Kučerová and Jaromír Zemina.
While her early work was based on classical sculptural techniques and abstracted forms, during the 1960s she began incorporating found objects and waste material into her sculptures, which she transformed into unique figurative compositions. She began to use enamel sheet, which became her signature material, to a greater extent in the mid-1960s, when her work was one of the highlights of Czech modern art and is deservedly included in Hazan's Nouveau dictionnaire de la sculpture moderne (Paris, 1970). Through the method of welded assemblage, she bound together seemingly disparate elements and built sculptures that, with their colour, fragile grotesqueness and inner urgency, overcame the rigid conventions of traditional sculpture.
After 1968, she and her husband, sculptor Vladimír Janoušek, found themselves in artistic isolation, unable to exhibit freely. It was during this period that some of her most characteristic works were created, reflecting not only the difficult social climate but also a deep personal reflection. Sculptures from this period, including the iconic Head (1980), bear the marks of intense physical manipulation of the material. The artist's method of joining sheets of metal with wire and welding with electrodes does not overstate, on the contrary, it emphasizes the harshness and rawness of the process. Head is an example of Janoušková's masterful ability to create poetic yet powerfully expressive forms. The bust's construction of blue enamel sheet gives the impression of a stitched torso, the surface of which bears traces of the material's fiery deformation and undulation. The expressiveness here lies not in dramatic gesticulation, but in the very texture and structure of the object, which seems to be constantly in a process of transformation - on the verge of emergence and decay. The shape stylization and roughly worked surface give the bust a grotesque, yet sensitively ironic character. Head evokes an archetypal figure, but its distorted form speaks to the fragility and vulnerability of human existence.
Even when Janoušková was forced to create outside the official scene, her works retained the courage to experiment with material and form. The combination of industrial elements and existential content in her work reflects the atmosphere of the then normalized Czechoslovakia, where artists sought alternative ways of expressing and sharing their art. It is for this reason that today her work is considered not only a significant contribution to the history of Czech sculpture, but also a key statement about the era in which it was created.
