Jan Hendrych

Jan Hendrych was born in Prague-Střešovice in the family of the lawyer Jaroslav Hendrych (1908–1992) and the sculptor Olga Hendrychová, née Tobolková (1910-1986), a pupil of Prof. Otakar Španiel.

Jan Hendrych (born 28 November 1936) is a Czech sculptor, painter, restorer, curator and professor emeritus at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

In 1951–1955 he graduated from the Secondary Industrial School of Interior Design (Prof. Václav Markup).

He studied at the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Prague (1955–1961) in the sculpture studios of Prof. Josef Wagner and Prof. Jan Kavan and attended seminars in general aesthetics led by Dr. Dušan Šindelář.

Through Prof. Kaplický, he became acquainted with the work of Marino Marini and learned from the expressive cubist modelling of Otto Gutfreund (Sitting in a Café, 1957) the plastic construction of Henry Moore's sculptures, and the possibility of smooth transitions between figuration and abstraction.

Jan Hendrych is himself very musical and has been influenced by listening to Baroque music throughout his life.

His sculptural work also gradually evolved towards a kind of Baroque mannerism.

He was an accomplished portraitist, but like many of his generational comrades, he too was affected by a wave of structural abstraction and experimentation with new materials (Figure with Raster, polyester, 1960).

In the 1960s he produced a series of abstract stelae (The Pianist, 1964), figurative abstractions (Leaning Figure, 1965–66) and expressive busts combining plaster with plastic and polychrome (Sitting with Thought, 1969) or with industrial elements.

With his own conception of abstraction, Jan Hendrych profiled himself as a distinctive individual with an authentic sculptural sensibility since the early 1960s.

In the late 1960s he returned to figuration with his distinctive response to the impulses of American Pop art and French New Realism with the sculptures The Reader and Sitting with Beer (1968).

His works are also associated with the contemporary "new figuration", marked by the return of existentialism.

In 1963–1966 he was a postgraduate at the Academy of Fine Arts under Prof. Karel Hladík and Prof. Karel Lidický.

Among his classmates and generational peers were several avant-garde artists who dealt with structural abstraction: Antonín Tomalík, Pavel Nešleha, Aleš Veselý, Zdeněk Beran, Antonín Málek, Jan Koblasa.

He first presented himself as a sculptor at the exhibition Socha 1964 Liberec and exhibited with members of the Index group at the Gallery of Modern Art in Roudnice (1966) and at the Vincenc Kramář Gallery (1968).

He had his first solo exhibitions in 1966 at the Young Gallery in Mánes and in 1967 at the Summer Palace in Ostrov.

Participated in nine FIDEM (International Art Medal Federation) shows.

After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 he lost the opportunity to exhibit and made a living restoring sculptures.

The most significant from this period is his reconstruction of two sculptures of Theodor Friedl on the attic of the theatre in Karlovy Vary (with J. Laštovičková).

Several busts of Secretaries (Secretary the Great, 1968–1969) are a reaction to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In 1969 he participated in the Artchemo sculpture symposium of plastic materials in Pardubice (constructivist torso of combined materials Lying, 1969) and the historically significant New Figuration exhibitions in Prague and Brno.

His reflection on the programme of New Sensibility and rational constructivism is one of the best examples of the liberating actuality of technical motifs in Czech art at that time.

During the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia he lost the opportunity to exhibit and from the 1970s worked as a restorer in South Bohemia.

It was not until 1988 that Jan Hendrych was able to exhibit his free work at the Prague City Gallery (Old Town Hall).

He was able to return to real creative work only after the fall of the communist regime in 1989.

In 1990 he was appointed head of the Studio of Figurative Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and a year later he was appointed professor there.

Several variants of carousels from the 1990s are a distinctive commentary on the social upheavals of the time, showing defeated, expressively modelled figures helplessly adrift on a rotating platform (The Great Carousel, 1994, Carousel, 1996–1997).

Sculptures and relief plaques with the theme of gates have a similar symbolism (Theatrical Entrance, 1991, The Gate of Dantescus, bronze, 1994, Lot's Woman, plastic, 1994).

In 1993 he became a member of the renewed Umělecká beseda, and in 1995 a member of the State Commission for Metallic Currency of the Czech National Bank.

In 1993-95 he was the vice-rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

From the same period comes the series of sculptures Wardrobe (1996–1999), which are conceived as existential situations and seem to still partly preserve the volume of the disappeared bodies that clothed them.

Hendrych portrays them with an irony that is at the same time a pathetic celebration of critical consciousness.

Jan Hendrych is a baroquely dramatic and emotionally oriented sculptor and his works are part of a kind of theatre stage, telling a story in accordance with the baroque image of the world.

In 1997 and 1999 he led two semesters of figure modelling at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

Jan Hendrych devoted himself to portraiture during his studies in Wagner's studio, but was also influenced by the expressiveness and emotional involvement of the Czech Baroque.

A comprehensive set of these sculptures was exhibited in 1997 by the Ztichlá klika Gallery (South Bohemian Bridge with a Figure, bronze, 1976, Blacksmith's Bridge, tin, iron, 1986, St. John's Bridge, tin, 1991, South Bridge, cement, 1996, Chinese Bridge, bronze, polychrome, 2000).

The bridges are also monuments to life's dramas and fatal tragedies, symbolizing the futility of every effort and glory.

At the same time he worked as an external professor at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica and since 2000 as the head of the sculpture studio there.

His encounters with historic bridges in small villages and the ubiquitous statues of John of Nepomuk were the inspiration for the following large-scale series of chamber sculptures of bridges with the figure, which continued until 2000.

The bridges are an existential metaphor for a fateful journey, a risk, a turning point, or a record of a dramatic event in conjunction with a human story.