Radoslav Kratina | |
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Born | Brno, Czechoslovakia | 2 December 1928
Died | 10 September 1999 Prague, Czech Republic | (aged 70)
Nationality | Czech |
Education | Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague |
Known for | Designer, painter, sculptor |
Spouse | Helena Křížová |
Website | www |
Radoslav Kratina (2 December 1928 – 10 September 1999) was a Czech graphic and industrial designer, photographer, painter, curator and sculptor. His work, based on rational thinking and a materialistic conception of the world,[1] is rarely unified and focused.[2] Kratina's works, for which he found stimuli in the real world,[1] are among the most authentic manifestations of Czech neoconstructivism of the 1960s[3] and combine contemporary constructive and kinetic tendencies with an existential dimension.[4] With his original and pioneering work[5] he established himself on the international scene during the 1960s. After the Soviet occupation in 1968 and during the following normalization, he lost the opportunity to exhibit and his works, created in isolation, were only discovered after the fall of the communist regime in 1989.
The variability of his artefacts is consistent with the concept of open work as formulated by Umberto Eco in the 1960s.[6] This space of postmodern freedom no longer has binding directions of development, and Kratina's variabils, in their conception, which Arsén Pohribný classifies as a stream of "irrational geometry",[7] go beyond the common understanding of the artwork.[8]