Lubomír Přibyl

In 1952-1957 he graduated from the Václav Hollar Secondary Art School, where he was taught by Prof. Zdeněk Balaš, Karel Müller and Karel Tondl. In 1957 he passed the entrance examination to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (prof. Vlastimil Rada), but the academic teaching did not satisfy him and after a year of study he was expelled for lack of interest. Among his classmates were the creators of Czech informel, who influenced him in his choice of non-traditional art materials.

In 1959 he met Jiří Kolář and Běla Kolářová. For the next two years he worked in the promotional department of the ČKD Devices factory in Vysočany, where he met Vladimír Boudník and Josef Hampl. He first exhibited solo in 1959 at the Rokoko Theatre and in the same year with V. Boudník in the ČKD factory canteen. During his employment at the factory, he had the opportunity to visit the regime's heavily guarded testing room in Běchovice, equipped with high-voltage generators. Lubomír Přibyl then became more deeply interested in light phenomena, physical and geometrical laws and technology.

In 1961, together with V. Boudník, J. Istler and R. Fremund participated in the Ljubljana Biennial, where his graphic sheet from the Mythy series was selected for publication by the International Graphic Arts Society[1] in New York. In Prague, Přibyl was visited by foreign gallerists from Paris, Baden-Baden and Curaçao in the Netherlands and invited to exhibit his work. In 1963 he became a member of the Hollar Society. From 1964 he participated in exhibitions at the Pratt Graphic Art Center in New York. He won an award at the 1963 Ljubljana Biennial and his prints from the 1965 Biennial were purchased by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. In late 1964, Pribyl's group exhibition was held at the Fronta Gallery in Prague.

In 1966-1968 he was represented in Prague by Galerie Platýz (Ludmila Vachtová) and in Germany by Klaus Staeck, who published several of his prints and exhibited Pribyl's works in galleries in Mannheim and Heidelberg. In Paris, Galerie Lambert and Galerie Arnaud exhibited his works, and in the USA, since the 1960s, Jacques Baruch Gallery, Chicago. In 1968 he exhibited at the Biennial in Buenos Aires. The International Graphic Arts Society in New York published another of Pribyl's prints and the Pratt Graphic Art Center offered him a solo exhibition.

After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, he lost the opportunity to exhibit in Czechoslovakia, but was invited to exhibit abroad and participated in exhibitions of Czech graphic art organized by Czech curators in exile (Arsén Pohribný, Libuše Brožková). In 1982 the publisher Limited Edition in New York published his graphic sheet. In the early 1980s, Pribyl participated in three unofficial exhibitions in Brno (curated by J. Valoch), OKD Prague 9 (curated by A. Potůčková) and the Jazz Section (Krabičky, curated by Joska Skalník). In 1989 he had a solo exhibition at the Institute of macromolecular chemistry of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Petřiny (curator Jiří Šetlík).

After 1989 Lubomír Pribyl exhibited regularly at home and abroad, since 1998 also with the re-established Concretist's Club. His retrospective exhibitions have been organized by Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb (2001), Regional Gallery in Liberec (2005), Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové (2011), Brno Gallery CZ (2011) and Topičův klub, Prague (2012).

Lubomír Přibyl is a solitary artist on the Czech art scene who has no direct predecessors and whose consistently monochromatic work is close only to some members of the Zero art group. His exclusivity also lies in the way he consistently addresses an autonomous artistic problem using endless variations of the chosen means. His work is rarely internally coherent and unmistakable in comparison to domestic and foreign art.[4] He is often classified as part of a broader stream of "new sensibility" that uses the language of geometry but modifies it and fills it with new meanings.[5] The discovery of new aesthetic phenomena and qualities, which characterizes the whole range of geometric art in the 1960s, is associated in Lubomír Přibyl's work with certain conceptual features and the establishment of new conceptual relations.[6]

At the beginning of his career as a painter, he briefly dealt with the stylized figure and zoomorphic and geometric shapes (Spherical Configuration, 1959, Spatial Diagonal, 1960), but soon became interested in the aesthetic qualities of non-traditional materials. His visual experience with the apparatus and electrical discharges in the high-voltage testing facility in Běchovice manifested itself in his later work in a typologically new minimalist approach to the image and the graphic page, through which he sought to capture the dynamic relationships of geometric formations.[7]

Pribyl's monochromatic black and white compositions are often organized symmetrically along a diagonal or vertical axis. Initially, he used the rough texture of jute and sand for his material prints (Spatial Diagonal, 1961, 1962). In 1963-1964 he temporarily abandoned geometric shapes and assembled his matrices for material prints from crumpled paper and sand (Paper Diagonal, 1964). Simultaneously, he created compositions on plywood using only sand cemented with oil paint (Spatial Configuration of 4 Segments, 1963, Segmented Diagonal, 1965).

Material prints with sand from 1964 to 1974 are characterized by sharp contrasts of white and black surfaces, as well as subtle transitions of light and structured shadows, and gradually evolve to increasingly complex geometric formations (Spatial Configuration of Two Parabolas and Two Segments, 1964).

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  Rag Spatial Diagonal, collography, 1962
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  Diagonal Break, collography, 1963
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  Two Spikes in a Diagonal, collography, 1963
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  Paper vertical, collography, 1963
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  Sand segment diagonal, collography, 1963

In 1962, he incorporated ropes, textiles and regular grids created by loosely laid or stretched fishing nets into his compositions (Found Net, 1964). The finished net did not offer many other variations, so he began constructing the nets himself on a wooden board made of taut ropes threaded through pre-drilled holes. He created large-scale compositions on the borderline between image and object, with the net fixed with black lacquer (Six Variations of the Spatial Diagonal, 1967–1969, Bicentric Net, 1994, 162 x 122 cm). The refraction of light on the compact black surfaces of the oil painting or on the silver aluminium foils with which he sometimes covers the surface of the board offers a spatial illusion.

Some of the compositions have a strict geometric order (Balance, Two Spikes, 1964), others rely on the principle of randomness (Aleatoric Texture - Swirling, 1962). The new technique allowed the artist to create endless variations of geometric curves, where the smooth transitions of light into deep shadows create a local thickening of the rope matrix (Rotation Network, 1972, Double Segmented Break, 1981, Spherical Diagonal, 1993, Spherical Break, 1999). Some matrices capture the intersection of rotational surfaces (Rotation Surface, 1976), unfolded spatial plans of geometric surfaces and illusively projected three-dimensional solids (Intersecting Needles, 1976, Beveled Prisms, 1993, Spatial Plans, 1998, Rotating Spatial Plans, 2002), internal tension and torsion (Eccentric Network, 1994, Torsional Diagonal, 1997).

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  Unrolled Net from the series Found Nets, collography, 1964
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  Swirling (Amorphous aleatory texture), collography, 1964
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  Aleatoric Network (Straight-lined), collography, 1972
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  Two Spikes (Two Parabolas on the Diagonal), collograph, 1965
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  Interrupted segmented path, collography, 1973

Spatial relationships and the unfolding of geometric shapes in a series of precisely constructed sequences are Pribyl's main themes in the 1990s. They are characterised by a certain ambiguity, where it is impossible to decide whether they are an illusion of a spatial formation or just a certain configuration in the plain surface.[8] The artist uses a computer to calculate some of his complex compositions.[4] Mathematician Jiří Fiala has called Lubomir Pribyl's work "morphoscopy". This new term, which is the counterpart of Ian Stewart's mathematical "morphomatics",[9] describes a technique of making shapes visible.[10][11]

The artist prints graphic sheets as collography - material printing from depth. In it, the image grid is printed as light lines with a fine texture, bordered by an irregular line of black ink, while places where the grid of ropes converges and the matrix is thickened and holds more color are printed from depth as a black area. As the lines diverge, the amount of captured colour diminishes, which then frames only the rope matrix, leaving the areas in between white. The result of printing is not only a mathematically accurate geometric mesh, but also random variations caused by the structure of the material used and the colour captured by it.

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  Space Plans, collography 1998
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  Thickened broken network, collography 1998
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  Torsal diagonal, collography 2008
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  Spike, collography 2016
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  Broken net, collography 2016

Hans-Joachim Goller on Lubomír Přibyl: ...He's an individualist. His work is characterized by an unwavering clarity of order. He has a consistent geometric tension, their effect is in a steady sense of mathematical precision and the exclusion of all extraneous details.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lubomír Přibyl.

• Lubomír Přibyl website
• Lubomír Přibyl in the abART information system
• Association of Czech graphic artists HOLLAR Prague: Přibyl Lubomír
• Grapheion: Lubomír Přibyl - Space is the basic theme of my work, 2011