Reviews

„Along with other artists who emerged on the Czech scene in the early 1970s, Vladimír Novák returned to representational painting and above all to the figure. The figure contrasted with a landscape horizontal that was at one moment shallow, sensed more than seen explicity, and at another moment with a distant and clear horizon, an expressive gesture and relishing, layered colour qualities suddenly appeared in sharp opposition to the purist conceptual and minimalist work of the 1960's.“

[Josef Hlavacek, Man in the Wind, 1999]

„Vladimir Novak represents with unusual urgency and admirable painter's execution the perpetually returning doubts and wishfull expectations of a man catched by the existential unrest and carried by the hopeful looking up. We feel to suddenly witness the allcomprising Herakleit-like infinite continuity and antagonistic contending. Anxiety, mania, fractionalism or groping on the pictures is balanced (lately more and more distinctly) by the elevation, contemplation, resting and findings.“

[Radan Wagner, REVUE ART, 3/2007]

„Although the figure remained Novak´s central theme during the 1970’s, its position altered. It appeared in space that was now oriented, characterized and animated by its presence … During the 1980’s the space of Vladimir Novak`s paintings, one that could until that point had been described as purist, was filled with relaxed painterly qualities that returned to an excited form of expression and the substance of paint in its fullest rendering. His pictures brimmed with remarkable new forms and fragments, signals of the human body … In about the mid-1980’s, Vladimir Novak`s paintings became filled with forms and colours, while their structure became increasingly complex and expressive … At that point, and then even more clearly at the end of the 80’s and beginning of the 90’s, it could be seen that Vladimir Novak`s work was progressing towards a fresh equilibrium and tranquil inner qualities, between sensuality and intellect seeking to establish order.“

[Ivan Neumann, Man in the Wind, 1999]

„We can look for the first key to his special imagination in a place that made an impact on him right from the time of youth, captivating him the whole his life: in the Bohemian Central Mountains. You just have to go up behind Blsany (where Novak comes from) and you are in the place of his mythology. On the left is Blsany hill, heralding the Bohemian Central Mountains, and above all Oblik and Rana hill, the first of which is sometimes the direct theme of his pictures while the second evokes undulating waves in the background ... The Bohemian Central Mountains bewitched Novak as a drama, a place of fate.“

[Josef Hlavacek, Individual Mythology (Pagan Celebrations in a Cathedral), 2007]

„If I had the task of finding an artist in contemporary Czech art who best translates the innermost mental processes and emotional pressures into monumentalized painternly expression, Vladimir Novak would among the first I would mention.“

[Alena Potuckova, Man in the Wind, 1999]