Ladislav Sutnar

Ladislav Sutnar is a world-renowned figure in product and graphic design. During the interwar period he significantly modernised the design of toys, glass, porcelain, metals and textiles, as well as expo and graphic design. He established the field of information design in the United States and is regarded as a predecessor of internet information solutions. However, he had already verified the modern principles of contour in his free art in the 1920s, when he was one of the promising painters of the forum known as the Umělecká beseda. He was known for industrial and urban landscapes, and his style included unusually strong colours and contrasts. He returned to painting in the United States in the 1950s, capturing the urban landscape of New York.

During the 1950s he created several oil paintings on canvas in which he experimented with geometric features in space. In 1963, aged sixty-five and retired, he began to take an interest in the female nude with his graphic album The Strip Street – Posters without Words. The subtitle captures a characteristic element of his style, which is in dialogue with the graphic design and advertising of that time, spheres he was involved in professionally. From 1962 onwards he began to paint female figures in acrylic on large-format masonite boards (ca. 2 x 1m) and called them Venus. By choosing this theme he wished to capture an icon of modern civilisation, the emancipated American woman, and open up his art to the masses. His painting differed markedly from what was taking place on the American art scene at that time by virtue of his preparatory geometric studies and the modernist principles he espoused and defended in many texts (partially published in the book Sutnar v textech / Sutnar in Texts).

In 1969 he formulated the programme Joy-Art, which cast an amused and critical eye over op art and pop art. He emphasised the utopian content of his Venuses, their optimistic vitalism, and their humanist, futurological ambitions. Contrasting clear colours and a humorous tension between the title and subject matter are typical of his work. In the last fifteen years of his life Sutnar focused on painting. He shifted from the sharp edges of the early 1960s to the reduced geometric shapes of the 1970s. During his lifetime his work achieved widespread renown, and after his death a travelling retrospective was organised that visited Prague, Zurich and Nuremberg in 2003 and Prague again in 2011 Since 2008 his Venuses regularly appear in auctions. The largest collection of Sutnar’s work is owned by his son Radoslav and in Bohemia by the Galerie Zlatá husa.

Václav Patzak, Ladislav Sutnar, Veraikon, XI, 1926, č. 9-12, s. 110-115.

Tomáš Vlček, Malby, koláže, grafiky, in: Iva Knobloch (ed.), Ladislav Sutnar – Praha – New York – design In Action, Uměleckoprůmyslové museum v Praze-Argo, 2003

Iva Knobloch (ed), Sutnar v textech. Mental vitamins, Uměleckoprůmyslové museum v Praze-Kant, 2010

Iva Kobloch (ed)., Americké Venuše, Arbor vitae, 2011, texty T. Pospiszyl, K. Císař, M.Juříková