| Milan Kunc | |
| Birth Date: | 1944 11, df=y |
| Birth Place: | Prague, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia |
| Nationality: | Czech |
| Field: | Painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, performance, music, ceramic art |
| Style: | Embarrassing Realism, Ost-Pop |
| Education: | Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, European Ceramic Workcentre |
Milan Kunc (born 27 November 1944) is a Czech postmodern painter and sculptor. He is known for "Embarrassing Realism," "Pop Surrealism," and "Ost-Pop," art movements characterized by their critique of society and media through ironic or melodramatic subject matter. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, his work, which often contrasted with the era's mainstream, made him a member of the Neue Wilde.
Kunc was born on 27 November 1944 in Prague. He studied at Prague's Academy of Fine Arts from 1963 to 1967. During the Prague Spring in 1968 and Czechoslovakia's occupation by Warsaw Pact troops, he was serving his mandatory military service, but on the day of the invasion (21 August 1968), he was in a military prison for civil disobedience. That night, he created an oil painting depicting a pair of army boots in reference to the famous painting of old shoes by Vincent van Gogh. In the 1970s, Kunc would process his experiences from this time in his life in a series of paintings, collages, and performance pieces that he called "Embarrassing Realism." He emigrated to West Germany in 1969, became a German citizen, and attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1970–1975, where his teachers included Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter. Going against the conceptual mainstream at the academy and the leftist leanings of the era's art scene at the time, Kunc instead focused on empathy, irony, sarcasm, color, and experimentation.
In 1973, Kunc made his first trip to New York, where he met fellow Czech artist and former student of Gerhard Richter Jan Knap, with whom Kunc closely collaborated afterwards. This trip, along with a visit to an exhibition by Saul Steinberg, inspired Kunc to begin drawing, a discipline that he has continuously developed over the years. There followed visits to Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. Also around this time, he produced his first works of "Embarrassing Realism."
In Düsseldorf in 1979, Kunc joined with Knap and Peter Angermann to found the internationally renowned Group Normal.[1] Some of the group's earliest exhibitions were in 1980 at the Neue Galerie / Sammlung Ludwig, in New York (The Times Square Show), and at the Musée de la Ville as part of the eleventh Biennale de Paris. In 1984, Group Normal was included in the exhibition Von hier aus, organized by curator Kaspar König in Düsseldorf.[2] In the 1980s, Kunc was considered a part of the "Junge Wilde" – the "wild young" artists of the German art scene. During this time, he collaborated with Jörg Immendorff on, among other things, posters, performances, and happenings (art actions) with a socio-critical commentary on the era's lack of environmental awareness – a subject that Kunc has explored throughout his career using his inimitable visual vocabulary. In the mid-1980s, he again visited the United States and South America, this time in the company of Silke Niehaus, whom he described as his "muse."
In 1983, Kunc showed his work at documenta IX in Kassel.[3] In the 1980s and 1990s, he lived and worked in both New York and Cologne, his son Roman was born to him and his then-partner, the artist and museum director Anne Frechen. During this era, he exhibited alongside artists such as George Condo at the Pat Hearn, Sprüth-Magers, Barbara Gladstone, Tony Shafrazi, and Robert Miller galleries. In 1988–1991, he spent time in Rome and Tuscany. Among the works produced during these years is a series of surreal landscapes and mannerist portraits that he exhibited at the Robert Miller Gallery. During his time in Italy, he refined his brushwork, leaving behind his earlier expressionist ductus in favor of a neoclassical and mannerist approach. With this "Lichtmalerei," he broke with the German mainstream and developed his own figurative style of painting.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Kunc moved back to Cologne. In 1992, he accepted an invitation from President Václav Havel to visit Prague. The following year, he showed a comprehensive selection of his work at solo exhibition at the Belvedere, followed by reprise showings in Karlsruhe, at Kunsthal Rotterdam, and at the Malmö Konsthall. In the mid-1990s, Kunc repeatedly produced ceramic sculptures in The Hague. In 2008, he accepted an invitation from the European Ceramic Work Centre in 's-Hertogenbosch.
In 1997 and 1998, Kunc was professor at the Kunstakademie Kassel, after which he returned to Cologne. He married the artist Olga Maler-Kunc in 2003; their daughter Věra was born in 2002. In the first decade of the new millennium, Kunc undertook several study trips to Italy and India. He returned to his hometown of Prague in 2004.
While still a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Kunc developed an artistic style that he called "Embarrassing Realism." He particularly created paintings and collages that took an ironic and provocative view of everyday life and consumer society. In the late 1970s, Kunc was already exploring the globalization of Western consumer icons as well as the double standard in the Eastern Bloc countries regarding consumer behavior in works he described as "Ost-Pop." Actionist performances in Germany (Wuppertal) und the Soviet Union (Moscow) produced heated debate and controversial publications.[4] This artistic style marked the beginning of an experimental period during which Kunc processed his personal experiences from the Cold War, creating objects that brought together consumer society, ideology, East, and West. He created staged photographs and performance pieces on this subject as well.
In 1977 in Düsseldorf, Kunc began to create ceramic sculptures, which he continued in 1995 in The Hague. His intense occupation with subjects related to the environment, media criticism, and the mystical and surreal produced another creative period in which he created more than a hundred ceramic pieces, of which the Louis Vuitton Collection acquired a number of fashionably whimsical objects. An exhibition at the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (Luxus Keramik) was followed by international showings in New York (Sperone Westwater), Trento (Studio d'Arte Raffaelli), Brno (House of Arts Brno), and Erfurt (Kunsthalle Erfurt). In 2008, Kunc worked at the European Ceramic Work Centre in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. His works were shown, among other places, at the Sculptures exhibition organized by the Andrea Caratsch Gallery in Zurich and St. Moritz. In 2013, Kunc accepted an invitation to the Korean International Ceramic Biennale in Gyeonggi, South Korea.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Kunc was invited by Czechoslovak President Václav Havel to hold a solo exhibition at Queen Anne's Summer Palace near Prague Castle.[5] The exhibition inspired debate on current issues such as intercultural openness, the search for identity, migration, and social and political change. Kunc saw contemporary developments as confirming his ideas from the early 1980s, including the provocative and prophetic visual imagery of his works. In 2015, Kunc was included in the exhibition The 80s: Figurative Painting in West Germany at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, which was reprised at the Groninger Museum in Groningen, Netherlands.[6]
In 2019, Kunc decorated a BMW i8 on the subject of the pressing environmental issues of our time. Though not an official BMW Art Car, it is exhibited at the BMW Museum and was auctioned to raise funding for The Ocean Cleanup project.[7]
In 2021, Kampus Hybernská in Prague honored Kunc with a solo exhibition titled Beyond the Imagination: Paintings and Sculptures 1968 – 2021, which presented a comprehensive look at his various artistic periods.[8]
Kunc's work can be found in numerous collections, including:
Kunc is considered an anti-conformist artist who rejects conventional aesthetics and ideologies. Especially in his Embarrassing Realism, Kunc's depictions of the insanity of reality reflect the influence of Magritte's "Vache period," Picabia, and Kippenberger, among others. His art is a paradoxical combination of irony and idealism. His unique visual style introduces new accents into figurative art and draws inspiration from Czechoslovak artistic tradition (portraiture, mystical landscapes, Symbolism, Cubism, caricature), which he further develops using his own stylistic approaches, themes, and critique of the current Zeitgeist. Kunc's ironic and provocative take on everyday life and his embarrassing yet resonant interpretation of burning sociopolitical issues can be found throughout his entire career.
Kunc's themes (the environment, feminism, media, social and political double standards) reflect contemporary global challenges. In 1989, ART – Das Kunstmagazin summarized Kunc's work in an article titled "International Success between Kitsch and Art." A selection of other authors' assessments of his work: