Stanislav Kolibal

Stanislav Kolíbal was born in Orlová, Czechoslovakia, in 1925 and lives and works in Prague.   

Since the early 1960s, Stanislav Kolíbal has developed a distinctive artistic approach informed by minimalism and conceptual art. His two- and three-dimensional works blur the boundaries between painting, drawing, sculpture, and architecture, often existing somewhere between illusion and reality. He explores instability and fragility through opposing ideas such as perfection and inadequacy, stability and instability, and certainty and uncertainty, while critically reflecting the tensions, ambiguities, and precariousness of his changing social and political environment.   

At Atelier Calder, Kolíbal created a series of sculptures titled Constructions in Wood and Iron (1992), using geometric forms to define the surrounding space. Made of metal plates whose intersecting ridges form right and acute angles, the sculptures created shifting patterns of lines and shapes. Some elements were hidden while others were revealed, suggesting a drawing concealed within each form. The horizontal lines seemed to continue from one panel to the next, encouraging the viewer’s gaze to move through the work. In Kolíbal’s sculptures, the solid forms are as important as the spaces between them.