Ivan Ouhel’s work has a special place in the context of Czech art of the last decades. Although he was a member of the free group 12/15 Pozdě, ale přece and Umělecká beseda, his painting style always retained a distinct individuality. His landscapes depicted more than a specific place, becoming a means of capturing personal experience, memory, movement, and a person’s relationship to the surrounding world. The exhibition Pod povrchom / Beneath the Surface presents a cross-section of Ouhel’s work from the 1990s up to his last paintings. In addition to a focus on his chronological development, it examines all of the themes to which the painter repeatedly returned. Landscapes as well as figure, often an anonymous figure exposed to the pressure of the surrounding world, play an important role. Gradually, however, the person became a natural part of the landscape, not its center. Ouhel’s painting combines intuitive experience with thoughtful pictorial composition. Descriptiveness gives way to the construction of space, spontaneously layered color surfaces, and relaxed painterly gestures, while organic shapes are complemented by lines and geometric interventions that give the paintings rhythm and internal order. His work was also influenced by his travels, especially in Canada and Indonesia. The Canadian landscape strengthened his interest in the relationship between organic structures and geometric order, while Indonesia brought greater color, lightness, and a richness of natural forms. The title of the exhibition refers to the layered nature of Ouhel’s work. Beneath the surface of his paintings, a dialogue takes place between nature and construction, intuition, and rationality – about how a person perceives, experiences, and searches for internal connections in the landscape.
Ivan Ouhel (1945–2021) is a significant figure of Czech painting in the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century. He was born in Ostrava but he lived in Prague since 1946. From 1969 to 1974 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in the studio of Karel Souček, and soon after he entered the art scene. In his work, he was primarily devoted to landscape and figure, through which he explored space, natural processes, and the relationship of man to the surrounding world. His painting connects intuitive experience with thoughtful pictorial composition and moves from figurative motifs to a unique abstracted concept of landscape. He was a member of the groups 12/15 Pozdě, ale přece since 1988 and Umělecká beseda since 1992. He consistently dealt with the relationship between man, landscape, and space, and his works are represented in important Czech galleries and private collections at home and abroad.