Zbyněk Novotný

Zbyněk Novotný (16.8.1950)

Academic Painter

Studies:

1965 - 1969 Secondary Technical School of Construction, Prague

1969 – 1971 preparatory paiting courses at František Nedvěd, ac. Painter

1974 – 1980 Academy of Arts, Prague, the studio of prof. František Jiroudek

I have been following the performance of Zbyněk Novotný for more than twenty years. During this period we have spent a lot of time together, searching for landscape beauties in our country and abroad. Nature – that is probably the biggest and strongest inspiration for Zbyněk Novotný and i tis an escape from the too technical and throughout commercialised civilisation at the same time. Collecting beetles – his main hobby – is for him not only a possibility to relax, but also an opportunity to look into the secrets of nature and to understand them. I tis self – evident that he is attended by his sketch – book in the pursuit of beetles and each journey is reflected in his work. After returning from Vietnam his pictures glowed with the red colour of lanterns from local villages and town slums, after coming back from Tunis the ochre of the North African deserts prevailed for a change. However, on his journeys he was mainly addressed and inspired evidently by the endless scale of the green colours of the tropical forest of Amazon and Indonesia. We can sense a rainy, steaming jungle full of mysterious animals and plants in the paitings, from this period. Although he has never painted a real concrete beetle, we sense them in all his ictures inspired by the collector´s journeys. These pictures are the celebration of the virgin wilderness, home of the most astonishing organisms one cannot even imagine. The wilderness destroyed by arrogant human beings at every step. RNDr. Svatopluk Bílý, CSc. National Museum, Prague

Representation in Collections The Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic Museo d Árte Moderna, Catanzaro, Italy Museo de Arte Abstracto, Cuenca, Spain Private collections in the Czech Republic, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, USA