Eva Švankmajerová (née Dvořáková; 25 September 1940 – 20 October 2005) was a Czech surrealist painter, ceramist, costume and stage designer, poet and prose writer. She was wife and partner of the artist and film director Jan Švankmajer. Her works are reflections of concrete events and their conscious and unconscious, imaginary or dream reinterpretations.Bertrand Schmitt, Kolektivní hra na soukromou vzpouru, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 17
Life Early years and studies She was born as the middle of three siblings in a bourgeois family in Kostelec nad Černými lesy. Her father ran a drugstore there and later founded the chemical factory Cyklamen.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 360 In 1942, at the age of two, her parents sent her to her grandmother in Osek to compensate for the loss of her son. The grandmother suffered from cyclical depression. She no longer expected anything positive from life, and she passed these feelings on to little Eva. Her negative impact on her granddaughter's early childhood was the source of Eva experiencing everything in life in a kind of premonition of calamity and with an inability to live without a specific culprit. Nevertheless, Eva was happier with her grandmother than with her parents, remembered her grandmother with affection and later painted her portrait.Jan Švankmajer, Modelový závěr k mentální morfologii Evy Švankmajerové / Model Conclusion to Eva Švankmajer's Mental Morphology, Analogon 19, 1997František Dryje, Jedna malá dívenka věděla své anebo Osud / One Little Girl Knew Her Own or Fate, in: F. Dryje, 2006, pp. 7–8
Eva Švankmajerová's literary work was influenced by reading old editions of the women's magazines Pražanka and List paní a dívek, which she found at her grandmother's house. The decadent literary vocabulary and affected syntax of these magazines, the charm of stupid life advice and wisdom, and the melodramatically kitschy outpourings became the source of the imaginative humour of her own texts, in which she spontaneously blends mannerred diction with language that is deliberately plebeian or late-normalization communist.František Dryje, One Little Girl Knew Her Own or Fate, in: F. Dryje, 2006, p. 9
After war, she returned to Kostelec to live with her parents, but throughout her adolescence she felt a strong rivalry with her brothers. The need to get her parents' attention was probably also related to her temporary (perhaps hysterical) deafness. Her psychological state triggered neurotic somatic-type manifestations, such as lameness. A strong inner conflict between the consciousness of female predestination and the need for artistic self-fulfilment at 16 led to a demonstrative suicide attempt by coal gas.Drvota S, 1973, p. 47
From her early youth she drew and in 1954–1958 she studied carving under Václav Markup and drawing under Vladimír Landa at the Industrial School of Housing. Her classmate was Ivo Medek. In 1958–1962, she studied scenography at the Puppetry Department of the Academy of Performing Arts under Richard Lander. In 1958, she saw Jan Švankmajer's graduation performance The Deer King. Jan immediately attracted her interest, but then had to serve in the army and they met again after two years.
1960s In 1960, as a student, she helped with making masks in the black light cinema during the preparation of Švankmajer's production of Starched Heads. In the autumn of the same year she married him and in 1963 the couple had a daughter Veronika. In 1964, she participated as an actress and designer in the short film The Last Trick ().Poslední trik pana Schwarcewalldea a pana Edgara, ČT, 1964
In 1964, she participated together with Jan Švankmajer at May 57 Group exhibition and in 1966 she was represented at the collective Youth Exhibition in Brno (for the International Association of Art Critics Congress). She exhibited individually for the first time in 1967 at Youth Gallery in Mánes. In 1967, Jan and Eva took part in the exhibition Fantasy Aspects of Contemporary Czech Art in Jihlava and Prague and the exhibition Prager Künstler in Linz, and in 1968 in the last exhibition of May 57 Group in Basel (Austellung tschechischer Künstler).Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 363
In 1968, the Švankmajer family moved to a Renaissance house in Prague-Hradčany, which they purchased from the Prague Castle Administration. Together they travelled to Paris, where student demonstrations were taking place at the time. Upon their return, the situation at home escalated when the StB began to prosecute the signatories of The Two Thousand Words manifesto, which was also signed by Jan Švankmajer. The whole family took temporary refuge in the apartment of animator Pavel Procházka. After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Eva arranged documents for the whole family and forced them to emigrate to Austria. Jan Švankmajer made a short film there (Picnic with Weissmann) and then decided to return home. Eva wanted to take advantage of an invitation to the United States, but in the end she followed him to Prague with her daughter.Eva Švankmajerová, in: Magincová D, 1997, p. 169
Normalisation and persecution In 1969 she had solo exhibition in Písek. Ivo Medek brought the Cuban surrealist Jorge Camacho to the Youth Exhibition at "Krásná jizba", where Eva Švankmajerová's paintings attracted his interest. He visited her in her studio and they exchanged paintings. This meeting became a crucial event for Eva. Jan Švankmajer arranged a screening of his films for Jorge Camacho and on that occasion they both met the surrealist group around Vratislav Effenberger.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 365
During the normalization period, she lost the opportunity to exhibit in official galleries and sporadic exhibitions of her paintings were held in Germany, Lyon or small unofficial galleries in Prague.
In 1970, the Švankmajer couple became members of the Surrealist Group in the Czechoslovakia and Eva has been a kind of informal "leader" ever since.Vratislav Effenberger, Zhnusovat hnus (Třikrát o EŠ) / To disgust the revulsion (Three Times about ES), in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, pp. 48-49 Both participated in all the activities of the Surrealist group and in 1972 they took part in several experiments in the Central military hospital in Prague with euphoric gas and LSD.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 366 In 1974, reproductions of her paintings were published in the Parisian surrealist magazine B.L.S. with a text by Vratislav Effenberger on her paintings.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, pp. 368-369
From the mid-1970s, she and Jan Švankmajer set up a ceramic workshop in her father's house in Kostelec nad Černými lesy. They signed their works with the common pseudonym E. J. Kostelec (or J. E. Kostelec).Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 370 In 1975, the Švankmajer family had a son Václav, who later also became an author of animated films.International Movie Directory: Václav Švankmajer
In 1976, she met Emila Medková, who at that time renewed her cooperation with the Surrealist Group in the Czechoslovakia, and became a close friend of hers.
In 1979, the Parisian gallery Le Triskéte prepared an exhibition of forty paintings by Eva Švankmajerová under the title Césarienne - Peintures (Caesarean section - Paintings), which was eventually cancelled. Only a lithographic poster and a small catalogue with reproductions and texts translated into French were published, illustrating her direct, sarcastic and cruel view of the female fate and the female body.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 372 The Geneva review Le La, led by the surrealist poet Gilles Dunant, offered the Czech surrealists a fake copyright of the Swiss edition for their samizdat collection Open Game in order to circumvent the communist censorship.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 374
In 1981, the Švankmajer couple purchased a 19th-century castle in Horní Staňkov, which they discovered while searching for exteriors for the film The Fall of the House of Usher. They build a ceramic kiln there and gradually converted the completely dilapidated castle, which had previously served as a hostel for seasonal Roma workers, into a surrealist Kunstkamera.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 375
In 1983, a joint exhibition of Czech surrealists was to be held at Sovinec Castle. The day before the opening, two StB officers officially banned it as an "unauthorised event". Only a small samizdat catalogue was published. In 1985, a minor exhibition of Eva Švankmajerová's paintings was held in a small unofficial gallery Juniorklub in Prague. An unknown vandal cut up six canvases, including the painting Menstruation (1977).Bertrand Schmitt, in. 377 Under the title Secret Boils, in 1987 she exhibited paintings, drawings, prints, collages, objects and collaborations on Jan Švankmajer's films in Brussels and Tournai, Belgium. The exhibition was partially censored by the communist agency Artcentrum, which did not allow the paintings Emigration and Rebus 2 to be exhibited.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 378
1990s - 2005 With the fall of communism, her general scepticism towards society did not disappear, as one alienation replaced another and subordination to the party cultural line was replaced by dependence on market mechanisms. The possibility of presenting her works freely gave her energy, but did nothing to diminish the personal revolt that had accompanied her since childhood.Bertrand Schmitt, The Collective Game of Private Revolt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, pp. 10 As a fierce individualist, she never subscribed to feminism, but rejected the established roles of the (subservient) woman in society and often turned her unkind, ironic and even cruel humour on herself.Bertrand Schmitt, The Collective Game of Private Revolt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 14
In 1990, the surrealist magazine Analogon began to be published again, and from the second issue onwards Eva regularly contributed to it. A retrospective exhibition Analogon 1969-1990 was held in Paris, where Eva was represented by her paintings. In 1991, Jan and Eva Švankmajer had a joint exhibition Contamination of the Senses in Annecy on the occasion of the International Festival of Animated Films.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 379
In 1994, she teamed up as a production designer on the feature film The Lesson of Faust and received the Czech Lion Award for "Best Art Achievement of the Year" together with Jan Švankmajer. In the 1990s she exhibited in Cardiff, Welshpool, Hanover, Gütersloh, Sitges, Telluride in the United States.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 381
In 1996, a major exhibition of works by Eva Švankmajerová and Jan Švankmajer entitled Touch, Arcimboldo, Vanitas was held in several European cities (London, Warsaw, Kraków). The French filmmakers Michel Leclerc and Bertrand Schmitt began to prepare the concept and script for the feature-length documentary Les Chiméres des Švankmajer, which premiered in 2000. A further exhibition of 61 works by the couple was held in London in 1997, and in the same year Eva was represented in exhibitions at the National Gallery in Prague and the Prague City Gallery.Bertrand Schmitt, in: Eva Švankmajerová, 2023, p. 382 In 1998, major exhibitions of both spouses were held in several regional centres and the monograph Anima Animus Animace - EvaŠvankmajerJan, between film and free creation was published.