Czech Abstract Painter Zdenek Sykora Dies ~ Pioneer in Computer Geometrical Paintings

Written by Bogre Kummelman Wednesday, 13 July 2011 23:40

Prague - Czech painter Zdeněk Sýkora, known for his geometrical paintings and for being among the first artists to use computers in his work, has died aged 91, in Louny, the northern Bohemian city in which he was born. He was among the few contemporary Czech artists well known abroad, and his works are included in permanent art collections such as in the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the MUMOK in Vienna. Sýkora ranks amongst the elite of artists pursuing geometric tendencies in Czech art whose beginnings can be found in the early 1960's. Born Feb 3, 1920, in Louny, Sykora's style gradually developed from landscape paintings in the late 1940s to geometrical abstract structures. In the 1960s, he became one of the first artists in the world to use computers to help him create geometric abstract paintings.

Prague Art & Design says of him in a profile. “His unmistakable morphology developed gradually: abstracting landscape paintings led him to geometric forms which can be compared to Op Art. ... Sýkora is a phenomenon who never ceases to fascinate us. Every attempt at interpreting his work, however, ends up in describing his artistic method.”

“Art which doesn’t feel or isn’t capable of perceiving the spiritual pathos of contemporary scientific knowledge and actual work, is not the art of today or the future,” Sýkora once said in an interview with art historian Vitek Čapek. “I am continually intrigued by the possibilities of New Media and knowledge so long as it deepens or clarifies the expression of my life emotions.”


Sýkora’ approach to artistic work was fundamentally affected by his encounter with paintings by Matisse in St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum in 1957, according to Czech art dealers Prague Art & Design. Having exhausted black-and-white and color combinations, Sýkora arrived at his style of geometry after recording computer-generated data on canvas in the form of lines following exact rules, after starting to collaborate with the mathematician Dr. Jaroslav Blažek in 1964.


“I was forced to accept a consistent rational logic which in no way impoverished my ideas, on the contrary, in fact,” the painter told Čapek. The color scale of the lines, their density, direction and thickness were determined by numbers.

“The first works using the computer showed that consistent adherence to a set system disturbed a number of artistic conventions, composition or otherwise, which would, for example, probably not allow for the same element to be repeated ten times one after the other. The computer then can influence one’s thinking in that it behaves more logically and accurately.”

‘He is a phenomenon who never ceases to fascinate us. Every attempt at interpreting his work, however, ends up in describing his artistic method.’

Sýkora graduated from the Academy of Architecture and the Pedagogical Faculty at the Charles University in Prague, where he also later lectured for many years, influencing several generations of both artists and theoreticians.

In the 1960s, he was member of the art group Crossroad (Křižovatka), when he created his first structures and realizations for architecture (for example in the Prague neighborhood of Letná or in the Jindřišká Street). In 1985, Sýkora began collaborating on paintings with his wife, Lenka. In 2005 he was awarded the Herbert-Boeckl-Prize for his lifelong work.

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