Magdalena Jetelová


Magdalena Jetelová is a Czech installation artist and land artist.

Life

Jetelová studied sculpture at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts from 1965–1971, and studied abroad at the Brera Academy in Milan from 1967 and 1968.
Her early work was significantly influenced by the Prague Spring, often dealing with themes of power and dominance in public spaces. Through the 1980s, she lived and worked in the Tichá Šárka district in Prague, working on pieces exploring social distress and spatial conflict, such as Marking by Red Smoke, Prague. She emigrated to West Germany in 1985, and her studio was destroyed. Later works include large-scale wooden sculptures of tables and chairs. Jetelová reproduces and often distorts simple everyday items in large wooden objects in order to explore ideas of regimentation of public space. An exhibit of hers for the Museum Kampa gained attention for floating down the Vltava river due to a flood and ending up near Mělník. Since 1986, she has experimented with outdoor light and laser projection.
Her iconic sculpture Place was installed at the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail in 1986. It was originally intended to last a short time before being set on fire. Instead the artwork has remained on its hilltop position for 29 years and has been visited by millions of visitors from all over the world. It is due to be decommissioned in 2015.
In her monumental 1992 installation Domestication of the Pyramid, she placed a pyramid made of red quartz sand inside the architecturally ornate Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. In the next two years it was also installed in Dublin, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Rottweil, and Warsaw.