Untitled

Typical of the work of Jan Kotík was the systematic contemplation of a painting’s material limits. From the early sixties, the artist focused on thematizing the painterly idiom, experimenting with the traditionally established relationships between the picture plane and the spacial dimension. The chief objective of his efforts was the detachment from an image’s illusory space. A important role in this process was also played by the series of white collages whose relief was created by a composition of torn and cut-through bits of paper on a black support. The structure of the collage housed in the Collection of Prints and Drawings of the National Gallery Prague represents an example of an abstract arrangement of imaginary shapes that exclude any reference to material fragments. Instead, Kotík stresses real space that exists between the work’s particularities, thus heralding the significance of his later conceptual approaches.