Mikuláš Medek (3 November 1926 – 23 August 1974) was a Czech painter. He united the artistic tradition of over three generationsMráz B, 1970, p. 56 and thanks to the originality of his expression, depth and spirituality of his extraordinary work, he occupies one of the most prominent places in the Czech art history of the post-war period. Vladimír Hirsch, Mikuláš Medek: Metaphysical transformation of Pain, American Convozine 2004 Medek's entire work must be perceived in the context of the times, as it directly reflects the oppressive atmosphere of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. He worked freely only for a short period between 1963 and 1969 and had only two exhibitions in Prague during his lifetime.
He was the grandson of the impressionist Antonín Slavíček, the son of the general and writer Rudolf Medek and the brother of Ivan Medek. Medek's studio was one of the meeting centres for artists and art historians during the communist rule in Czechoslovakia.
Life
1926–1960 Mikuláš Medek was the son of Rudolf Medek, a teacher, legionnaire and brigadier general of the Czechoslovak Army, and Eva Medek, née Slavíčková. He was the grandson of the painter Antonín Slavíček. He had a sister, Eva (1921-1924), who died tragically as a child, and an older brother , Ivan (1925-2010). His grandmother Bohumila Slavíčková was married for the second time to Herbert Masaryk, and Mikuláš's aunts were her two daughters - art historian Anna Masaryk and Herberta Masaryk, married to art historian Emanuel Poche. Her daughter Charlotta, was married to Petr Kotik, son of the painter Jan Kotík. Mikuláš Medek maintained friendly relations with his uncle, the film director Jiří Slavíček. Rudolf Medek wrote a five-volume chronicle of the Czechoslovak Legions, published legionary short stories, wrote poems for Moderní revue, and was the author of film scripts and the play Plukovník Švec, which was staged by the National Theatre.Rudolf Medek and his premiere "Plukovník Švec", Pestrý týden, 3.11.1928 A debating club of intellectuals and artists of a wide range of political views - from Catholic poets to communists - met in the Medeks' apartment. Rudolf Medek was friends with General Jan Syrový, the architect Strnad, Bishop Antonín Podlaha, the writers Josef Kopta and Viktor Dyk, and the poets Jaroslav Seifert, František Halas, Josef Hora, Josef Palivec, Jaroslav Durych, Jan Zahradníček, Josef Kostohryz, and others. Mikuláš's mother was also literary active.Eva Slavíčková-Medková, Vzpomínám na Antonína Slavíčka, (2nd edition), L. J. Peroutka, Prague 1946
From 1929, the Medeks lived in a service apartment in the National Monument at Vítkov, where Rudolf Medek was the director. In 1939, the Gestapo took the apartment, and the family spent a year in their country house in Čejkovice and then from 1940 lived in an apartment at 49 Janáček Embankment in Prague. Rudolf Medek deliberately asked to be hospitalized at Bulovka hospital to escape arrest, but died of peritonitis in August 1940. In 1943, the Nazis occupied their house in Čejkovice and then the Red Army took it over.
Mikuláš Medek graduated from primary school in Karlín and then attended the Academic grammar school until 1942. At that time, he was mainly interested in literature and was going to study biology,Ivan Medek, Life with Mika, in Mikuláš Medek, Texts, 1995, p. 292 but the universities were closed during the war. In the fourth year of grammar school, his interest in fine arts prevailed, and he transferred to the State Graphic School in Prague. He studied under Prof. K. Müller, where his classmates included Jan Hladík, Vladimír Fuka, Vlastimil Sova and Václav Sivko. In the last year of the war, the whole class was "totally deployed" in the Dorka cooperative, where they knitted bags. In May 1945, as a member of an illegal student group, he took part in the Prague uprising with the defenders of the Old Town Hall, and after it was set on fire, he escaped through the sewers. In the summer of 1945, he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of Prof. V. Minář and V. Rada. After the first semester, he transferred to the studio of František Muzika at the Academy of Arts and Crafts and in 1947, he moved to the studio of František Tichý. His classmates were Zbyněk Sekal, Stanislav Podhrázský and Josef Lehoučka. Mikuláš and his mother joined the Communist Party in 1945, but after the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état, they both left. During the purges organised by the communist students, Mikuláš Medek was expelled from the Academy of Arts and Crafts in 1949.
Before the end of the war, two girls whose parents were taken to a concentration camp by the Nazis lived with the Medeks - Jana Krejcarová, Milena Jesenská's daughter, and Gabriela Dvořáková, a student at Academy of Arts and Crafts, with whom Mikuláš Medek fell in love and married in 1947. At the same time, Josef Lehoučka introduced him to Emila Tláskalová, and the two began a love affair that deepened the following year when they spent their holidays together. At the beginning of 1949, Mikuláš Medek divorced, and in September 1951, he married Emila. In 1952, a daughter, Eva (Iviska), was born to the couple. Mikuláš's family lived in a shared apartment with Ivan's family and with his mother, who married a second time to the lawyer J. Velkoborský, at 49 Janáček Embankment in Prague. One of the two living rooms also served as a studio and a meeting place for Medek's friends. Emila Medková was employed as a photographer at the Institute of Human Work, and her daughter was looked after by Mikuláš on weekdays or stayed with her grandmother Emilie Tláskalová, and her parents commuted to see her.
After being expelled from school, Medek found himself in social isolation and existential worries. His unfinished studies meant that he could not become a freelance artist, he was threatened with being drafted for two years of compulsory military service, and he had to look for a job. A difficult period followed, when he worked for several months at a revolver lathe in the Škoda engineering plant in Smíchov (1950) and finally had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized at Bulovka. He avoided military service when he inflicted a knife wound to his chest.Stanislav Drvota, Personality and Work, Avicenum 1973, p. 86 In the following years, he received occasional commissions in the field of applied book graphics, as a poster designer for the circus or as a painter of decorations. The artists were commissioned and supplied with painting materials by Jaroslav Puchmertl, a sculptor and former member of the Ra group who was employed by the Central Committee of the National Front.
Mikuláš Medek never gave up his work for the sake of commissions for a living, which developed without interruption from the mid-1940s. In 1945, he exhibited two paintings for the first time at a student exhibition and became acquainted with Libor Fára and, through him, with the circle of the Spořilov surrealists. From 1949 onwards, he was in contact with Vladimír Boudník, Bohumil Hrabal and his circle (Egon Bondy) and Jiří Kolář. In 1951, Emila and Mikuláš Medek joined the group of surrealists around Karel Teige and participated in the samizdat editions Znamení zvěrokruhu (Signs of the Zodiac) and Object and the questionnaires on surrealism organized by Vratislav Effenberger. The whole group of surrealists was monitored and eavesdropped on by the secret police (Action: Mazalové), and several StB collaborators were in the vicinity of Mikuláš Medek and reported on him (Egon Bondy, Jaroslav Puchmertl, Josef Vyleťal, Stanislav Drvota).Vodrážka M, 2019, pp. 49, 72–74, 105, 108
In 1955 and 1956, together with Zdeněk Palcr and Stanislav Podhrázský, he worked as a fresco restorer in Strakonice and Klatovy. In 1957, he submitted drawings for the tapestry manufactory in Valašské Meziříčí, which the company eventually failed to realise; he illustrated books under a pseudonym. The first articles about Medek's work were published in 1956 by the Polish Przegląd Artystyczny and a year later by Ludmila Vachtová in the magazine Tvar.L.V. (Ludmila Vachtová), The painter Mikuláš Medek, Tvar VIII, 1957, no. 9, pp. 280–281 In the same year, he met Václav Havel, Jiří Kuběna and Josef Topol. In 1958, three of Medek's paintings were exhibited for two days at the Faculty of Arts and Ludmila Vachtová introduced him to the theoreticians František Šmejkal and Zdenek Felix. He became friends with Jan Koblasa and the Šmidra group. Through Herberta Masaryk, the following year he met the composers Krzysztof Penderecki, Józef Patkowski and Luigi Nono. Medek's requests for exhibition dates were permanently rejected at that time, and he was also excluded from all group exhibitions.Mikuláš Medek - Texts, 1995, p. 202 In 1960, Ludmila Vachtová submitted an article about five Czech painters (Medek, Istler, Koblasa, Kotík, Sklenář) to the review La Biennale di Venezia. The article was the first report on Czech contemporary art in the West, and Vachtová was investigated by the StB and fired from the editorship of the magazine Výtvarné umění.
1961–1969 Artists and theoreticians who met at Mikuláš Medek's flat have tried to register the creative group Konfrontace (Confrontation). In early 1961, a series of arrests and interrogations took place, and members of the group were bugged.Jan Koblasa, Records from the 1950s and 1960s, 2002, Vetus Via, Brno The application for registration made in 1961, as well as requests for exhibition dates in 1962 and 1963, went unanswered, and the group gradually disbanded. Only in 1962, thanks to theoretician Jan Kříž, were Medek's paintings presented in Vimperk and Kamenice nad Lipou at exhibitions, organized by the Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou. In the same year he was represented at the exhibition Arguments 62 at the Krzywe Koło Gallery in Warsaw, prepared by Marian Bogusz.
The situation changed when in 1963 Medek received a number of public commissions for architecture - painting for the Czech Airlines office in Damascus, a monumental pano for the Czech Airlines hall in Košice,Mikuláš Medek's monumental Košice cycle is in Prague, Czech TV 15.5.2012 and an altarpiece for Jedovnice. He was accepted as a candidate of the Czechoslovak Union of Artists and in August he had his first major exhibition of paintings at the Teplice Castle together with the sculptor Jan Koblasa. The following year he exhibited three paintings at the D exhibition in the Nová síň Gallery in Prague, but the exhibition was not allowed to be accompanied by a catalogue or by a review in the art magazine. The exhibition Imaginative Painting 1930-1950, prepared in 1964 at the Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou by Věra Linhartová and František Šmejkal, was banned by the regional committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and was not open to the public. Only after the reform of the Union of Czechoslovak Visual Artists in December 1964 and the election of a new presidium headed by Adolf Hoffmeister was Mikuláš Medek accepted as a member and elected as an alternate member of its central committee. At the end of 1964, he won first prize in a competition for the decoration of the new airport building in Prague-Ruzyně and was commissioned to paint two paintings for the Czech Airlines office in Paris (one of the paintings was installed in Prague Castle after 1989).
In 1965, he had his first solo exhibition of paintings from 1947 to 1965 in Prague's Nová síň GalleryHartmann A, Mráz B, 1965 and was represented at several exhibitions of contemporary Czech art in Western Europe (Bochum, Baden-Baden, Celle, Paris, Munich, Liége, Rotterdam, L'Aquila), at the Salon of Youth in Paris, the San Marino Biennial and the European Forum in Alpbach, Linz and Graz. He was diagnosed with diabetes, for which he was frequently hospitalised in the following years.