Milan Dobeš
Milan Dobeš (1929, Přerov) is a Slovak artist and pioneer of kinetic art in the former Czechoslovakia. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. He turned away from the imposed call for art to fit into the conventions of socio-realism and began exploring expressionism instead, then cubism, which ultimately led him to constructivism and experimentation with optical illusions. He created paintings, as well as sculptures and optical-kinetic objects. Some of his works were made to improve the public spaces of cities like Bratislava or Osaka. In 1971, he also spent a year touring across the United States with the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, putting together an optical-kinetic arrangement to their compositions. He is among the most well-known names in Czechoslovakian art. (Source)
Dobeš took part in international exhibitions such as Kunst-Licht-Kunst (Eindhoven, 1966), Konstruktive Tendenzen (Nürnberg, 1968) and New Tendencies 5 (1973), as well as the Documenta 4 exhibition in Kassel; and which did not go unnoticed by the leading critics and theorists of the day (those writing on Dobeš's work include F. Popper, U. Kultermann and O. Bihalji-Merin).
Contents
Publications[edit]
- "Svetlo ako výtvarný materiál", 1973; repr. in Milan Dobeš, ed. Jozef Ruttkay, Bratislava, 1994, pp 183-187. (Slovak)
- "Dynamický konštruktivizmus", Bratislava, 1988; repr. in Milan Dobeš, ed. Jozef Ruttkay, Bratislava, 1994, pp 193-194. (Slovak)
Literature[edit]
- Miroslava Maurery, Milan Dobeš: medzi pohybom a svetlom, Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2016, 96 pp. Master's thesis. (Slovak)
See also[edit]
- Slovakia#Geometric abstraction, Neo-constructivism, Op art, Kinetic art
- Slovakia#Sound art (1960s-2000s)
