Blanka Stehlíková about Author
Jiří Altmann, who is celebrating his jubilee birthday, is an artist who can revive wood in his own hands. Using the body of a tree, he is able to carve a beam, build a staircase, put together a table, which is a practical and an artistic object at the same time, create a statue and also make a board or a wood-block for his wood-carving and mainly wood-cutting. He is capable of smoothening a wood-block until it shines, at other times he uses the lengthwise structure of the wood or the patterns of the wood rings – the actual memory of the trees – become a relevant part of the graphic pages. The perfectly mastered wood-cutting, which is almost his exclusive graphical art style, is not an objective, but an instrument. As the memory of trees remain in tree rings, so does Altmann’s art reflect his life’s destiny, his loves, desires and pain, period and environment, and of course, his artistic influences.
At the beginning of his studies at the Academy, Jiří Altmann was still taught by Vladimír Silovský, who continued in the tradition of Švabinský’s school that emphasized the knowledge of “craft“, but without suppressing the natural effort of individual artistic expression. Vojtěch Tittelbach, who continued in his position, applied the same principles. That is why the other graduates of the specialized graphic studies were different personalities than Jiří Altmann, for example, Jaroslava Severová, Eva Sendlerová or Petr Hampl. He finished his studies with a graphic art series on the basis of Francois Villon’s poems, which already had the typical characteristics of his artwork – an expressive tone, dynamically billowy shapes and variously structured areas. He was really fascinated with this theme and therefore did he come back to it in illustrations and graphic prints in the future years.
It could have been the expressive tone or maybe the original combination of picture and carved letters that lead Giradet publishing company in Essen to offer him a job of an art graphic. He left in 1968 a came back home after three years. In Germany, he had the opportunity to be introduced to a rich tradition and to the current trends of Europe’s graphic art, at the same time, he introduced his own work at exhibitions in several places, he began to take part in international exhibitions of wood-carving and wood-cutting. Only last year did he equalize the amount of exhibitions that he had in Germany with the amount that he had at home.
Jiří Altmann has belonged to the figurative movement of Czech art. He creates figurative compositions, either of people directly from life, or with a symbolic meaning. They are a reflection of a relationship towards family and motherhood, also containing tragic elements after losing his only son. After returning to Prague and living right in the centre of the historical town, he saw the richness of shapes and picturesqueness of the palaces, churches, towers, even of the bridges and river banks with different eyes, and revived the cities veduta in his graphical prints. He has always paid attention to portraits – psychological portraits of friends and even humorous self-ironical portraits of himself. His journeys to the Baltic republics, to Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania inspired him to create the cycle Boats. Norman myths and legends, which have a balladic spirit, grew from a publishing illustration job to an independent graphical complex. In the Tusculum of Černošice, high above the flowing river Berounka, in an art studio surrounded by a well grown forest and orchard, he returns to nature, especially to the transient beauty of flowers. He for sure has got a supply of hand made boards ready.
Blanka Stehlíková 2012