Exactly fifteen years have passed since the last large-scale retrospective exhibition of the work of Zdeněk Sýkora in the Czech Republic. Like the present exhibit, the earlier one was also held in the City Library in Prague, giving rise to the question of what during this period has changed in the life and work of this author, as well as in the reflection of his oeuvre.

As it happened, 1995 was precisely the year in which Zdeněk Sýkora began to develop a new theme in his linear paintings – lines that emerge from a single point. These paintings belong among the very best works in the artist’s personal corpus, and have deservedly found their way into many important private and public collections – to name a few, the National Gallery in Prague, the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, the Neues Museum in Nuremberg, the Musée de l’Art Moderne in Saint-Etienne. In addition to his paintings, Sýkora also completed two architectural realisations, and turned once again to the field of book illustrations. He has completed dozens of graphic works, prepared many exhibitions and catalogues, all in close cooperation with his wife Lenka. His lifetime contribution to artwork has been awarded many important (and often international) prizes. Likewise, he is increasingly mentioned in the media, though unfortunately less in terms of his paintings’ artistic worth than their monetary value, and has been the subject of several documentary films.

From the information above, it could be inferred that Zdeněk Sýkora is a personage of considerable public reputation, an artist whose work is widely known among the lay as well as professional publics. Suffice it, however, to have a glimpse at certain longer texts about his work, whether catalogues from group exhibits or any such publications from recent years where he may have been placed in a highly prestigious context, but the information about his actual production is either completely inaccurate or at least misleading. Despite the great quantity of previous work, the many exhibitions and the well-deserved publicity, Sýkora’s paintings remain, for many people, something inaccessible, incomprehensible, swathed in a strange mystery. In a sense, even at the age of ninety, Zdeněk Sýkora still awaits his true discovery. 

At present, an attempt to rectify the situation is underway through the production of the first monograph, or more correctly monographic project, intended to provide in the course of several volumes a unified overview of Sýkora’s lifelong-oeuvre, and primarily to make accessible all of the essential information required for a correct future interpretation of his artwork. The present exhibition comes at the moment that work on the edition has roughly reached one-third of its planned length, making it thus an early report on the result of research with archival materials, as well as a partial first attempt at rectifying several long-standing errors.

For the present exhibition, we have also tried to select and, within the limitations of finances and space, display the best examples of Sýkora’s artwork from the past fifty years. The floor plan of the City Library has inspired us to divide the exhibition into two independent parts, yet linked by an internal coherence. In the western wing, we have installed a chronological retrospective, to clarify the genesis of his oeuvre from the late 1950s onward as well as underscoring the consistent trajectory of formal development and the internal logic within his art. Precisely these aspects are an important pre-condition for the remarkable coherence within this corpus, as well as the central theme of the second part of the exhibit. Through the intentional confrontation of paintings from differing periods, supplemented by important information about the artist’s working methods, we hope to inspire a new method of considering Sýkora’s art. It is our contention that attempts at an overly generalised interpretation have proved unsuccessful, as well as the various tries at reducing his painting into a question of mere method or even the isolation of individual stages of his artwork.

Pavel Kappel, 2010