Karel Kuklík


Karel Kuklík was a Czech photographer and one of the representatives of Informel in Czech fine art photography. He was classified as an artist influenced by abstract and surrealist tendencies and as an artist who creates works with a strong existentialist atmosphere. In 2000 he co-founded the photographic group Český dřevák.

Life

Karel Kuklík was born in Prague. His father was a tailor, who was imprisoned for illegal activity during World War II. Young Karel spent part of the early 1940s with his relatives in a few places, for example in a village near Blaník Hill. When he was about six he befriended František Šmejkal, who was the same age as him and who later became a notable art theoretician. At the age of fifteen Kuklík acquired his first camera and a year later he bought a 6x9 cm plate camera. It was also at that time that he became seriously interested in fine art and started visiting galleries. In the first half of the 1950s he saw an exhibition of paintings by Jan Zrzavý, which made a great impression on him.
Between 1952 and 1954 he trained to be a car mechanic, which was what he did from 1954 to 1956 and from 1958 to 1960. Between 1956 and 1958 he did his military service. In 1960 he became a photo laboratory assistant at the State Institute for Historical Monuments Preservation and Environmental Protection in Prague. It was there that he acquired many useful photographic and darkroom skills. Since 1964 he has been a freelance photographer.
Karel Kuklík died after a long illness on Sunday 18 August 2019.

Work

Photographic series

Imaginative landscapes

Imaginative Landscapes is a general series created between 1958 and 1964. It includes the following individual series of photographs:
Honourable mention for photographs in The Most Beautiful Book of the Year 1984 competition organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Socialist Republic and the Museum of Czech Literature; Annual Award of the Panorama Publishing House for 1984
Awarded as The Photographic Publication of the Year 1997
Awarded as The Photographic Publication of the Year 1998
Awarded as The Photographic Catalogue of the Year 1999
Ten original 18x24 contact prints. Ten numbered copies published by the author in 1979, with accompanying text by Karel Dvořák.
Ten original 18x24 contact prints. Ten numbered copies published by the author in 1981, with accompanying text by Anna Fárová.
Ten original 13x18 contact prints. Ten numbered copies published by the author in 1993, with accompanying text by Jan Kříž.
Seven original 15x20 enlargements. Ten numbered copies published by the author in 1995, with accompanying text by Daniela Mrázková.

Gallery