Andel západního okna.
Leonidas Kryvosej is a contemporary Czech Surrealist whose work I’d known for a while from an exhibition catalogue. I’d always wanted to see more so it’s a pleasure to discover a substantial set of paintings on the website he shares with Lucie Hrusková. A biographical note tells us that:
Leonidas Kryvosej was born 14th May, 1957 in Moravská Trebová. He lives in Ondratice near Prostejov. He has been a member of the surrealist group in Sternberk (later A.I.V) since 1986. Since 1997 a member Czech and Slovak surrealist group.
Most of the text on the site is Czech-only but the green painting above was one of the catalogue works whose English title, The Angel of the Western Window, we can no doubt assume is borrowed from Gustav Meyrink’s occult novel about Elizabethan magus John Dee. Occultism and alchemical symbolism seem to fuel Kryvosej’s art, and I like the profusion of wings and mutated bird-like creatures. There’s a lot of work on his gallery pages, all of it worth seeing for anyone who favours this kind of imagery.
Note: I’ve had to remove the caron accents from this post since either WordPress or the encoding I’m using has a problem with them. Apologies to Czech readers.
Ptací hra.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
Leonidas is a personal friend, whom I’ve known since 1997 when I first visited Czechia and had the privilege of visiting his tiny apartment when he was living in the town of Prostejev. I met him again in 1998 when the Czechoslovak group of Surrealist had a retrospective exhibition at the Glynn Vivian in Swansea. I’v since had many visits and been gifted with several of his canvases. You can find a photo gallery of a fairly recent exhibition in the town of Trutnov, here:
http://www.trutnovinky.cz/index.php?gid=27511
You may also wish to see painting by his close friend and ex-member of the Czech group, Pavel Surma, (if you haven’t already come across him. Leonidas taught Pavel to paint and they remain close friends and neighbours living in rural Moravia.
Best wishes, Bill Howe (Leeds, UK)
(Leonidas and Lucie are pictured together in the bottom row of photos)
…Sorry, I forgot to include a URL for Pavel Surma.
http://www.pavel-surma.com/?page=paitings