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MARIÁN MUDROCH
25. June 1945 - 31. July 2019
country
Ex Czechoslovakia
period
1968-1989

Marián Mudroch (1945 – 2019, Bratislava) is one of the most important representatives of the unofficial art scene in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 80s.

Until 1965 he attended the School of Applied Arts, Department of Photography in Bratislava. From 1965 to 1971, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava under prof. Václav Cigler in the Department of glass-making, and until 1968 in the Department of Painting under prof. Jan Mudroch. He started working as a teacher in 1973.

He was involved in the organisation of the First Open Studio, which opened on 19 November 1970 in Rudolf Sikora's house in Bratislava, where he performed several actions as part of the collective project Atmosphere 1970 as a reaction to the political situation in Czechoslovakia during the normalisation period. He did the Focus Your Attention on the Chimneys of the House action, which was the opening event of the First Open Studio. Besides that action, he as well did the Colourful Smoke and Grocery Store action, as well as two collective actions - Czechoslovakia and the Arranged Flowerbed, with Viliam Jakubík and Vladimír Kordoš.

In the same year, near Christmas, he was a part of Milan Adamčiak's project Gaudium et Pax, organised in Bratislava's suburbs. For the projects, with Viliam Jakubík and Vladimír Kordoš, he decorated a tree and performed an action in which he exhibited carnival masks in the snow, again using coloured smoke.

Since the mid-1970s, he engaged mostly in painting, graphic, especially serigraphs, in which he connected the analytical approach with quotes by famous artists. In his later work, Mudroch focused mainly on the analytical study of graphics and drawing, in which he brought a meditative character associated with Eastern philosophies. In the 1980s, Mudroch dealt with monochrome graphics and drawings. He was a member of the Avance – Retard group, started in 1989 (Milan Bočkay, Klára Bočkayová, Ladislav Čarný, Daniel Fischer, Vladmír Kordoš, Otis Laubert, Marian Meško, Igor Minárik, Marián Mudroch, Dezider Tóth). In the 1990s, he began to use neon light drawing and the theme of darkness.