Olga Čechová

Olga Čechová was an independent participant of the art scene to which she significantly and originally contributed. In 1960, she joined the art group Trasa (Route) connecting with artists who spontaneously inclined to and became a part of the stream rehabilitating the meaning of object and figuration in art. In 1969 she participated in the exhibition New Figuration organized in the Mánes Gallery, and she also participated in an exhibition of the same name in the Gallery of Fine Arts in Litoměřice in 1993, which was a reminder of this work.

The work of Olga Čechová can be divided in two basic areas – illustration and free art, which she was engaged in simultaneously. In her drawings she matured to having distinctive expression, distant to artificial descriptiveness. She gave preference to indications, incompleteness, intuitive expression of atmosphere, associative connection of elements from common reality and fantasy. Her work went through a development from free fragile drawings to ragged compositions consisting of an abundance of fine lines. During the 1960s she also created more robust drawings with a brush that appear to be expressive, poetic and dreamy all at once. Near the end of her life she went back to the simple free sign interpretation. In graphics she acquired various graphic techniques – for example woodcutting, lithography and primarily dry point, which she was essentially familiar with. Using this technique she made her supreme pieces of work (e.g. series’ Hidden Garden, 1965, Italian Journey, 1966, Remains of Plants, 1967, Four Basically Same Letters, 1967, Six Body Parts, 1969, etc.) Olga Čechová’s dry points are surprising with their original interconnection of force of penetration and fragility, sensitivity and aggressiveness. They testify about the ability to get under the surface of things, penetrating all the way to the essence, revealing extremely personal phenomena – hidden and mysterious. A typical trait of her work is an erotic vertone (e.g. cycle Time of Blades, Time of Trust, Time of Illusions, Time of Courage, Time of Sailing, 1969, Couple, 1970, Song of Songs, 1991, etc.)

A less known part of her work includes collages. During the 1960s she created surreal collages from magazine cut outs, based on the principle of random connection of distant realities. After some time her collage work showed a shift in the direction of plasticity and structural abstraction. In 1984 she created a cycle of assemblages Bandaged, in which the main technical, symbolic, as well as significant element was gauze. She continued with textile assemblages in 1992.

She considered illustration to be her life vocation. She illustrated a total of 130 children’s books and 20 adult books; she cooperated for a long time with the children’s magazines Mateřídouška and Sluníčko. She belonged to illustrators who developed fantasy, playful and non-descriptive interpretations of illustration. According to her opinion: “illustration should not depend on the first perception of the text, it should not count on general conventional taste, it should live independently next to literature.” Her illustrations of children’s books are of distinctive, playful and fantasy character and yet they are comprehensible. The foundation consists of brilliantly mastered drawings, with typical features being bright colours and decorative arrangement. She applied a more intimate and sober approach in her poetry illustrations – she artistically accompanied, for example, the poetry collections of Vladimír Holan, Jaroslav Seifert, Josef Hora and others.

Olga Čechová also continuously wrote her own literal texts and poems, in which she sensitively and intuitively reacted to the daily reality, associatively connected perceptions, memories, feelings and visions. Her private texts are based on the daily reality and experiences and they cross to original dream visions that apply original metaphors and comparisons. They were published for example in the books Prague Walks (1977), Intimate Texts and Drawings (1998) or Sweet Core of the Heart (2011).

Hana Rousová, Olga Čechová kresby, katalog výstavy v GHMP, 1985

Eva Petrová, Olga Čechová texty, kresby, grafika, katalog výstavy v SVUG v Litoměřicích, 2003

Věra Jirousová, Zemřela výtvarná umělkyně Olga Čechová, deník Referendum, 2010

Alena Potůčková, Pocta Olze Čechové, katalog výstavy v GVU v Roudnici nad Labem, 2011