Databáza

Rudolf Sikora

Rudolf Sikora

Narodený(á) 17. duben 1946, Žilina
Lived in Bratislava

He is a key figure in Slovak conceptual art. He deals with the most fundamental issues regarding the existence of man and the world in the context of post-modern thinking. In contrast to foreign representatives of artistic trends, who took part in important exhibitions on the international scene before 1968, he developed his work within the second wave of Slovak conceptualism in forced isolation from the surrounding world.


action art, conceptual art, graphics, drawing, painting, object, installation, photography, show in map

1967

After finishing his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (VŠVU) in Bratislava, under the leadership of professors Dezider Milly and Peter Matejka, he started to capture symbolic landscapes, which he complemented with curves and arrows in the form of relief maps of abstract forms (Graphs of Good and Evil, 1969). During a temporary scholarship at the Akademie der Bildende Künste in Vienna he created a series of temperas and the gouache Recollection of the Alps. In the same year, he married Eugenia Šipošová, an art historian specializing in applied art (she became a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (VŠMU) in Bratislava in 1973). They have two sons: Martin (1968) and Michal (1978).

1968

During his travels through European countries he created a series of works Recollection of Côte d´Azur, Monaco, Marseille, Toulon and others, as part of his final examination at the VŠVU.

1969

He worked on the extensive cycle Topography which is, contrary to his previous poetic maps, a specific capture of the surface of the world and its impaired environmental balance.

1970

His first solo exhibition was in the Gallery of the Young in Bratislava (curator I. Gazdík). On the 19th of November, he held the first public meeting of the young generation of upcoming artists called "The 1st Open Studio" in his house in Tehelná Street 32 in Bratislava. In the courtyard of his house he presented his topographic pool Recollection of Dalmatia, complemented with plans and documentation. At the end of the year, he performed Out from the City I, II, III, through which he addressed the existing pollution in cities. He used an arrow for the first time (a sign that he later used frequently) to draw attention to the natural aspect of being. (He "drew" large arrows into snow using black ink and marked his route through the city and snow-covered fields at the edge of the woods). In two further performances he replaced the arrows with a mysterious letter abbreviation.
Rudolf Sikora: Topografia (solo exhibition, Bratislava)
1. otvorený ateliér (group exhibition, Bratislava)

1971

Regular Tuesday meetings at Sikora's gave rise to several projects (J. Koller, S. Filko, R. Sikora, I. Gazdík – each with their own sign), which continued in the following years (Time I – Time IV with various artists). He touched on the issues of the substance of life, the situation of humanity on and away from the Earth (Honour to the intersection of the meridian of longitude λ=-19°12' 27,3'' and the parallel of latitude φ=49°19' 14,4'').
Súčasná slovenská grafika I (group exhibition, Banská Bystrica )

1972

He was concerned with the state of the mankind and the environmental imbalance, which he presented in the cycle Cross-Sections of Civilization (four vertically-oriented formats of landscapes showing the development of housing

1973

He started to cooperate with Budapest artists (László Beke, Dóra Mauer, Imre Bak, György Galántai, Miklós Erdély, György Jovánovics, Sándor Pinczehely, András Bán etc.), with the Foto-Medium-Art gallery, Wroclaw – Jerzy Olke, galerií Remont – Henryk Galewski, and with the Dziekanka gallery in Warsaw. He has kept in touch with Jürgen Weichardt (Oldenburg) and remains in close contact with artists of all generations of the Czech unofficial scene.

1974

He created the Time – Space series which raised three questions: the coming, the situation, and the direction of man. The Exclamation Mark cycle as a memento of our civilization. Habitat I, II, III series was to be exhibited at the biennale in Warsaw. Even though he was supposed to win the first prize, the work was removed after a protest by the Czechoslovak cultural attaché and the prize was not awarded.

1975

Habitat I
Habitat I (photography)
Habitat II
Habitat II (photography)
Habitat III
Habitat III (photography)


1976

He started to use the symbols of stars (a symbol for birth) and crosses (a symbol for death) in between which there was an arrow (symbolizing movement, energy, and also a short duration or transfer of energy), which he dealt with in his later cycles. In the work Concentration and Decay of Energies from the years 1976-79, a motif of the black hole appeared in the set of of life and death signs which proved the seriousness of the situation (Concentrations of Energies - Black Holes, 1976-1980). In addition to using graphic marks as building elements, he started to use real ashlars, stones, bricks to build pyramids and cairns (symbolizing a model of the development of human civilization). The Pyramids cycle continued with the cycle of Pyramid... Civilization... Diagrams (New Beautiful World) and culminated with a number of large pyramids in which he used the positive-negative principle (My Universe?, Positive? Negative?). The Origin, End cycle captured his own action portrait – NO! NO! YES!
Década de 70/ The Seventies (group exhibition, São Paulo)

1977

As a result of his participation in the samizdat Album 76, which was made by Ivo Janoušek in cooperation with 69 Czechoslovak artists for the Venice dissident biennial, and in other activities, Sikora was investigated by the State Police

1979

Čas...Priestor (solo exhibition, Orlová)

1980

The Touches cycle represents a record of the process of life until the moment of its completion (Touching the Grave) in which he used palms marked by signs covering the sign of the tragic cross.
Rudolf Sikora: Graphics (solo exhibition, Brno)

1981

(Rudolf Sikora) (solo exhibition, Rtyně v Podkrkonoší)

1985

The Noosphere, Constellations cycles in which the circulation of universal energies was confronted with the energy of human thinking resulted in the Anthropic Principle, in which he turned his attention from the Universe to man and his neglected part (an x-ray picture of his own hand and head in the form of skeleton, which we usually do not see during our lives). Disintegration (of the artist and the Universe) is demonstrated by dissimilar signs, such as the remnants of dying systems and in the form of symbolic burial grounds.
Fotografie. Michal Kern, Rudolf Sikora. (solo exhibition, Bratislava)

1986

Second Portfolio (group exhibition, Budapest)
Rudolf Sikora: Time ... Space, The Anthropic Principle (solo exhibition, Rimavská Sobota)
Rudolf Fila, Jozef Jankovič, Rudolf Sikora (group exhibition, Helsingborg)
Rudolf Sikora: Self-Portraits (from the Anthropic Principle) (solo exhibition, Brno)

1987

The Broken Cross triptych started a new phase of his work which was influenced by his search for new relationships and reconstructions. He changed his value system based on the scepticism of his knowledge. A meteorite as an agglomerate of matter and an element of disintegration became the base of the cairns through which he honoured the human being: Trimmed Cairn, Crucified Cairn (in memoriam of František Šmejkal), Fallen Cairn.
Rudolf Sikora: Drawings - Prints (solo exhibition, Bratislava)
Hostia Galérie H (group exhibition, )
Rudolf Sikora: Drawings, Prints, Photographs, (solo exhibition, Sovinec)

1988

18th January – establishment of the Syzýgia group (Gabriel Hošovský, Martin Knut, Miloš Novák, Rudolf Sikora, Jiří David, Stanislav Diviš, Tomáš Císařovský).
Rudolf Sikora: Photographs (solo exhibition, Litvínov)
Nový slovenský obraz (group exhibition, Bratislava)
Prešparty ´88. Stretnutie československých výtvarníkov (group exhibition, Prešov)
...Igorovi Kalnému (group exhibition, Bratislava)

1989

He joined the Gerulata Group (ended in 1999). Following the November events, in which he participated, he created memorials to the past Torsoes of a Cairn (1990), Cairns – Graves (1991), Grave of Suprematists (1991) in which a black cross emerges from a white area suppressed by red and blue signs. In the Coat of Arms (White, Black, Gold..., 1991) cycle he dealt with the disintegration of existing countries and units and, at the same time, recalled the look of a warrior's shield. He returned to the postmodern spirit of recycling in Touching of Grave (1981–1990), which he complemented with his palm prints and the sign of cross. It resulted in a painting of human activity (settled energy) which does not reach beyond the boundaries of the grave (cairn) and remains incarcerated within it forever. He also used the principle in his later cairn self-portraits (An observer and an Earthling (On a Pavement), 1996–1999) and in the paintings of conflict zones in East Europe, where the sensitive boundaries were highlighted by militant signs (L’ Arc de Triomphe (Bosnia, Bosnia!, 1993). Even his most recent malevichien variations (Malevich's Grave, later Grave for Malevich, 1991–1996, 1997–2005) proved that he continued to deal with the graveyard of avant-garde, but he never reconciled with the end of the history of art. He has demonstrated that the story can continue even after its end and he has continued to depict scenes of the afterlife of modernism. By moving from the elementary to the global, he expresses a strong commitment to the current state of humanity within spatial and temporal coordinates.
Súčasná slovenská grafika X (group exhibition, Banská Bystrica )
Michal Kern, Rudolf Sikora. Fotofest. 1. medzinárodný festival fotografie k 150 rokom vynálezu fotografie (solo exhibition, Žďár nad Sázavou)
Rudolf Sikora (solo exhibition, Prague)
Rudolf Sikora (solo exhibition, Bratislava)

1990

He started to work at the Bratislava Academy of Fine Arts and Design. Since 2004 he headed the Open Studio there and he qualified as a senior lecturer.
Artists Tribute to Jiří Chalupecký (group exhibition, Prague)
Hulík, Jankovič, Kern, Meliš, Sikora, Tóth (group exhibition, Liptovský Mikuláš)
Hulík, Jankovič, Kern, Meliš, Sikora, Tóth (group exhibition, Liptovský Mikuláš)
New Leaves of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (group exhibition, Dresden)
90 Authors in the Year 1990 (group exhibition, Prague)

1991

Zlatý erb V
Zlatý erb V (painting)

Art of Action (group exhibition, Prague)
Rudolf Sikora (solo exhibition, Cologne)
Rudolf Sikora (solo exhibition, Prague)
Art, Europe, Czechoslovakia (group exhibition, Lingen (Ems))
Dal grottesco al magico/ From the Grotesque to the Magical (group exhibition, Roma)

1992

He actively participated in media and meetings against the division of Czechoslovakia. He built his new studio in Marianka near Bratislava. He was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.
Čierny erb II
Čierny erb II (painting)

Rudolf Sikora (solo exhibition, Bratislava)
Rudolf Sikora: Medzi nebom a zemou (solo exhibition, Pezinok)
Czech and Slovak Contemporary Art 1950 - 1992 (group exhibition, Novara)
Minisalon (group exhibition, Prague)
Insights - Czech and Slovak Contemporary Art (group exhibition, Cologne)
Grey Brick 35/1992 (group exhibition, )
Twenty Czechoslovak Graphic (group exhibition, Ostrava)
Česká a slovenská kresba 1989 - 1992 (group exhibition, Žilina)

1993

Rudolf Sikora: Disintegration of the Symbols (solo exhibition, Berlin)
Elektráreň T (group exhibition, Poprad)



1996

He was a co-founder of the "Save the Culture" forum. He expressed his disagreement with the Ministry of Culture’s cultural policy and participated in protests (10 March 1997 - protest participants - artists - spent a night occupying the Ministry building).

1997

Rudolf Sikora: Of Creation (solo exhibition, Frýdek-Místek)



2000

Rudolf Sikora: Cez médium fotografie (solo exhibition, Trnava)
Donations (group exhibition, Bochum)
Light of Birth (group exhibition, Benešov u Prahy)

2001

Zo zbierky Prvej slovenskej investičnej skupiny (group exhibition, Bratislava)
Rudolf Sikora: Malevičov hrob (solo exhibition, Ostrava)
Jiří Kolář the Collector (group exhibition, Prague)


2003

He worked at the Faculty of Arts of the Technical University of Košice as a guarantor of fine arts.
Reality Check (group exhibition, Prague)

2004

Look Light (group exhibition, Prague)
Behind the Glass. From the Collection of Jaroslav Krbůšek (group exhibition, )





2009

Z mesta von. Umenie v prírode (group exhibition, Košice)
Nenápadné médium (Podoby súčasnej kresby) (group exhibition, Žilina)

2010

Syzýgia: Posledná výstava? (group exhibition, Bratislava)
Rudolf Sikora: One More (solo exhibition, Bratislava)



2013

Rudolf Sikora: O svete (1973/1979) (solo exhibition, Prague)


2015


2017

Vizuálna poézia – 50 rokov vzťahu výtvarného umenia a poézie na Slovensku (group exhibition, Banská Bystrica )
Kozmikomiks (group exhibition, Bratislava)


Muzeum umění Olomouc 2011-2024