Life-size marionettes, graphic art and collages, fantastical hybrid creatures, ceramics, surrealist paintings, taxidermy, obscure fetishes and relics, cinemas and stages – the universe of Czech surrealists Jan and Eva Švankmajer seems never-ending.
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The special exhibition created with Jiří Fajt, Move little hands... “Move!” will open its doors at Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau on 18 November, giving an insight into the artistic couple’s lives and work. Visitors to the show can expect both a cinematic experience and a curiosity cabinet. It presents contemporary Czech surrealism through a wide variety of media, uniting the oeuvres of both artists in one place.
Jan Švankmajer (*1934) is considered the doyen of animated film in the Czech Republic. The stop-motion technique he developed was a key source of inspiration for directors like Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam. His films cover fundamental human themes like love and pain, loss and death, aggression and fear, as well as chaos and order, comedy and irony. However, the creative diversity of his work extends far beyond the boundaries of the cinematic medium. Especially when banned from making films in the 1970s, he created countless objets d'art, as well as poetry and theoretical texts.
Besides her work in film, Eva Švankmajerová (1940-2005) is also known for her surrealist paintings, graphic art and objets d'art, as well as writing numerous poems and prose texts. She worked with her husband Jan Švankmajer as a designer on many of his films – including “The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope”, “Alice”, “Faust” and “Conspirators of Pleasure”.
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