Radoslav Kratina (2 December 1928 – 10 September 1999) was a Czech graphic and industrial designer, photographer, painter, curator and sculptor. His work, based on rational thinking and a materialistic conception of the world,Radek Kratina, in: Radek Kratina 1928 - 1999: Idea con variazioni, 2000 is rarely unified and focused.Jiří Machalický, in: Radek Kratina: Variabilia and Monotypes, 2004 Kratina's works, for which he found stimuli in the real world, are among the most authentic manifestations of Czech neoconstructivism of the 1960sLarvová H, 2013, p. 15 and combine contemporary constructive and kinetic tendencies with an existential dimension.Radek Kratina, in: Slovník českých a slovenských výtvarných umělců 1950-2001 / Dictionary of Czech and Slovak Visual Artists 1950-2001, Ostrava 2001, p. 224 With his original and pioneering workJiří Valoch: Radoslav Kratina, Galerie bratří Čapků, 1967 he established himself on the international scene during the 1960s. After the Soviet occupation in 1968 and during the following normalization, he lost the opportunity to exhibit and his works, created in isolation, were only discovered after the fall of the communist regime in 1989.
The variability of his artefacts is consistent with the concept of open work as formulated by Umberto Eco in the 1960s.Zbyněk Sedláček, in: Kratina in Dynamo, 2012 This space of postmodern freedom no longer has binding directions of development, and Kratina's variabils, in their conception, which Arsén Pohribný classifies as a stream of "irrational geometry",Arsén Pohribný, Changes in Geometric Starting Points, Ars geometrica, Art Group Other Geometry, 1993 go beyond the common understanding of the artwork.Jan Sekera, in: Radek Kratina 1928 - 1999: Idea con variazioni, 2000
Life Radoslav Kratina was born on 2 December 1928 in Brno. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno from 1943 to 1948 and after graduation worked as a textile designer. From 1952 he continued his studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, first in the studio of graphic designer and painter Josef Novák (1952–1953), and later with Prof. Alois Fišárek (1953–1957). In 1955 he married fashion designer Helena Křížová. As his final work, he submitted a set of blueprint patterns for the dividing panels in the interior of a restaurant at the Expo 58 in BrusselsLarvová H, 2013, p. 290 From 1957 to 1962 he worked as an industrial designer of textiles and toysLarvová H, 2013, pp. 284–285 (exhibition at ÚLUV in Prague, 1961).
After moving to a new apartment in 1962, he began to work as freelancer. His wife Helena, who worked as a designer at Oděvní tvorba (Clothing Design), was a reliable source of support for him, as she was allowed to travel abroad and partly supported him financially.Valoch J, in: Hana Larvová (ed.), 2013, p. 33 In the 1960s he participated in several collective exhibitions together with artists who dealt with structural abstraction, lettrism and constructivism. In 1964 he assembled his first variable object from matchsticks.
In 1967, together with Arsén Pohribný and other artists, he co-founded the Club of Concretists and participated in a joint exhibition in Alpbach. The following year he participated in the exhibitions New Sensibility. Crossroads and Guests in Prague and Brno, and between 1968 and 1971 in a series of exhibitions of the Club of Concretists at home and abroad. Kratina acted as secretary and organizer of all the club's activities throughout this time.Valoch J, in: Hana Larvová (ed.), 2013, p. 43
After the occupation in 1968, some members of the Club of Concretists emigrated and the club ceased its activities in 1971. Kratina lost the opportunity to exhibit and until 1989 he privately and in isolation developed the possibilities of his transformable objects and wrote accompanying texts in which he tried to interpret his own work as accurately as possible.Radoslav Kratina, On Rational Approaches in Art Production, Ars geometrica, Other Geometry Art Group, 1993Valoch J, in. 37Radek Kratina, GBR Louny 1991Radoslav Kratina, Exhibition Hall Sokolská 26, Ostrava 1996 He himself also photographed various spatial variations of variabils himself.Valoch J, in: Hana Larvová (ed.), 2013, p. 37 In 1989, at the end of normalization, after a nearly twenty-year pause in Kratina's own exhibitions, Karel Holešovský stated about his variabils: "despite their relevance, their mission is not adequately fulfilled in today's society. . are excluded from more general use in the appreciation of their artistic qualities... a certain lack of understanding is surprising..." (although) Kratina is an internationally recognized artist whose work is maturing into sovereign artistic excellence.Karel Holešovský, in: Radek Kratina: Variabily, Brno 1989
In 1980–1983, in connection with efforts to save the tombstone of Jindřich Štyrský,0755205&z=17 Maps. 1, 1997/01/09 Kratina created an extensive set of documentary photographs of artistically valuable tombstones in Prague and out-of-Prague cemeteries.Larvová H, 2013, pp. 23-24, 286-287
At the end of normalization in September 1989, before the restoration of the Club of Concretists, he founded the Creative group Geometry.Artistic creative group Geometry After 1989, the activity of regional associations of the Club of Concretists was resumed, along with exhibitions at home and abroad. Kratina was represented at all major exhibitions covering modern Czech art since the early 1960s and at a number of solo exhibitions in regional galleries and in Prague. Retrospective exhibitions surveying his work in detail were held posthumously in Liberec (2000) and in 2013 at the Prague City Gallery (Stone Bell House). In addition to Arsén Pohribný and Jiří Valoch, Kratina's work has also been studied by Josef Hlaváček, Jan Sekera, Jan Kříž, Karel Holešovský and especially Zbyněk Sedláček, who prepared an inventory of Kratina's work.Jiří Machalický, in: Radek Kratina 1928 - 1999: Idea con variazioni, 2000
Radek Kratina died in Prague on 10 September 1999 as a result of a serious illness.
Artistic foundations The manifestations of constructivism and geometric abstraction in Czech art of the 1960s, which Jiří Padrta summarized under the comprehensive designation "New Sensibility", were a reaction to the existential work of artists engaged in structural abstraction (Informel) and New Figuration. The artists drew on the constructivism of the interwar Czechoslovak and European avant-garde (Union of Modern Culture Devětsil, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Abstraction-Création),Arsén Pohribný, in: Larvová H, 2013, pp. 77 but they were also familiar with contemporary tendencies, represented by Swiss Constructivism, Kineticism or the Zero group. The new aesthetic was represented by the French movement Les nouveaux réalistes, the GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel) and Julio Le Parc, the Swiss Richard Paul Lohse, or Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker of the Zero group. Kratina did not have any direct foreign predecessors, but he appreciated the work of the Israeli artist Yaacov Agam and the Venezuelan Jesús Rafael Soto.Jana Sokolová, Radek Kratina in Slovakia, Ateliér vol. 18, no. 19, 2005/09/22
The group of concretists initially formed within the circle of the art groups Křižovatka (Crossroads) - since 1963 and Syntéza (Synthesis) since 1966 and in 1967 founded its own Club of Concretists. The initiator was Radek Kratina together with Tomáš Rajlich, Jiří Hilmar, Miroslav Vystrčil and art theorist Arsén Pohribný.Ečerová M, 2010, p. 19 Exhibitions under the title New Sensitivity: Crossroads and Guests were held in 1968 in Brno and Karlovy Vary and in 1969 in Prague Mánes Gallery. Some participants objected to the title of the exhibition because the number of guests was three times the number of members of the Křižovatka group.Ečerová M, 2010, p. 23 The Club of Concretists presented itself independently for the first time at exhibitions in Žilina and Prague in 1968. Soon after its foundation, the club grew to 36 permanent members. After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, some emigrated and the rest were not allowed to exhibit. The club disbanded after 1970.Daňková, J.: Czech Geometric and Concrete Art and the Concretists' Club 2 - Olomouc. Bachelor thesis, Brno: Masaryk University, Faculty of Philosophy, 2008, p. 19.
Artwork Applied art After graduating from the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno, Radek Kratina devoted himself to textile design in 1949–1952. Here he applied his innate sense of order and harmony in the design of decorative cloth and indigo prints based on the principle of regular geometric patterns. He also designed collections of wooden toys and building blocks.
He also worked as a textile designer during his subsequent studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (1952–1957). His graduation work was a textile panneau for a restaurant at the Expo 58 in Brussels, on which he used rubber stamps to create figurative motifs composed of several geometric elements.Josef Hlaváček, in: Radek Kratina 1928 - 1999: Idea con variazioni, 2000 Kratina's toy designs were inspired by the figures that children assemble from chestnuts and offered a variable combination of individual turned parts. Another series of toys made of flat stylized shapes offered similar transformations.
1960s The impulse for his own free creation and abandonment of applied artRadoslav Kratina, in: J. Králík, R. Kratina, MČR v Turnově 1990 became the exhibition of his generational friends Rychnov ´63, especially the creators of informel,Zbyněk Sedláček. 1994 which attracted him by its unconventional approaches and directness of expression.Valoch J, in: Hana Larvová (ed. 30 He was also interested in the graphic experiments of Vladimír Boudník.Larvová H, 2013, p. 16 The exhibition in Rychnov represented a radical and irreversible step for Kratina's move towards the formulation of an uncompromising creative gesture and at the same time a choice of a clear artistic orientation,Olaf Hanel: Radoslav Kratina, Prostor Zlín 1999, p. 14 determined by his need to seize things and to fulfill a sense of concreteness.Radek Kratina, Brno House of Art 1967
Between 1963 and 1965 Kratina devoted himself to oil painting, relief paintings, monotypes, frottage, assemblages, collage and sculptural compositions made of plaster. He used a variety of scrap materials found around his home to make his printmaking matrices and printed the artworks using two rubber cylinders from a hand wringer. He achieved interesting results with objects that could not be rolled with paint directly, but by frottage through the attached flimsy. He experimented with paraffin, loose materials or plaster cast on newsprint.Radoslav Kratina: Experimental Graphics of the 1960s and Transformable Objects, 1995 For the creation of lettrist monotypes he reprinted fragments of texts from foreign newspapers and magazinesValoch J, in: Hana Larvová (ed.), 2013, p. 34 with his own original method, taking advantage of the difference in the absorption of the font colour and the free space of the magazine pagesZbyněk Sedláček, Radek Kratina: Experimental Prints and Frottage from the 1960s. 1994 and from the first impression on coated paper he printed a positive so that the typeface could be read again (Reprinting the typeface, 1965).Larvová H, 2013, p. 17
At the end of the 1960s, he created a set of two-colour prints on handmade paper with repeating geometric elements, and in the 1970s a set of colour serigraphs using a similar principle as Jan Kubíček or Zdeněk Sýkora.Larvová H, 2013, p. 19