Blecha

myminifactory

This abstract artwork called Flea ("Flea", in Czech) is displayed at the Veletržní National Gallery in Prague and was created by Zbyněk Sekal. Sekal's beginnings as an artist coincided with war, during which he expressed harsh experiences through art and as a student came into contact with surrealism. He never fully adopted this movement like some of his peers (Mikuláš Medek), but rather saw it as a platform that allowed him to address persistent existential questions about the place of man in society. Surrealism thus opened up a world of imagination for him, and after 1956 he began introducing it into simple, ordinary scenes, leading him to pursue a form of work that reflected the enigmatic realism of new objectivity. Sekal's interest in philosophy (which he also translated from German) added to the metaphysical-magical side of his work, an example being his painting Little Box (Krabička, circa 1956). At the same time, Sekal began working in sculpture, removing himself from academic approaches to resolving basic questions of sculpture and attempts to process interwar avant-garde, as a solitaire he modelled unconventional, summarising figurative heads (mainly heads and busts), which were infused with contemporary sense of disquieting uncertainty and surviving feelings of trauma from war (Shouting Head / Křičící hlava, 1957; Dead Head / Mrtvá hlava, 1957; Little Bird / Ptáček, 1957). Around 1958 Sekal began moving towards a more abstract form of expression: his sculptures from the series Abode (Obydlí) and Signalling (Návěstí) range from soft contructivist forms to imaginatively absurdist hybrids. Sekal's work from around the years 1958-1962 is filled with shapes welded together and brought into harmony. It was at the end of this period that he created his very abstract sculptures Armchair (Křeslo, 1962) and Head (Hlava, 1963), which reveal him to have been undergoing an unprecedented radicalisation at that time in freeing shapes into simple geometric forms. Sekal did not continue in this direction because for a sensitive and existentially preoccupied nature such as his it produced something too cool and exclusive of meaningful contexts. This object is part of Scan The World, a non-profit initiative introduced by MyMiniFactory, through which we are creating a digital archive of fully 3D printable sculptures, artworks, and landmarks from across the globe for the public to access for free. Scan The World is an open source community effort, if you have interesting items around you and would like to contribute, email stw@myminifactory.com to find out how you can help.