Luboš Plný (born 4 November 1961) is šPlnýa Czech painter and conceptual artist, usually classified as a creator of art brut. His work can be found in many important collections in the Czech Republic and elsewhere. He is the only Czech artist invited to the 2017 international exhibition Viva Arte Viva! at the 57th Venice Biennale. He lives and works in Prague.
Life
Luboš Plný was born in Česká Lípa (then Czechoslovakia). He was an only child of parents, employed at Czechoslovak Railways. He began making drawings in childhood, and was also interested in anatomy, which he studied by dissecting dead animals. He apprenticed as an electrician at a railway vocational school in Nymburk. In 1983, he did his basic military service, but the stressful environment caused him to suffer from depression, sleep disorders, and hallucinations, and he repeatedly had problems with insubordination. He was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia simplex and hospitalized. He spent the next six years working for the Czechoslovak Railways in northern Bohemia. In his free time, he taught painting courses and also trained in bodybuilding and powerlifting. At age 27, he was given a disability pension.
In 1989 Plný moved to Prague, where he spent the next several years holding down various jobs. He painted tin soldiers and was a janitor at a department store, a sales clerk at an antiquarian bookshop, and a security guard at a gallery. In 2004 he even took a gravedigging course. He began to take a deeper interest in the causes of his insomnia, studied medical literature and anatomical guides, and attended autopsies. His drawings from that time were a form of self-therapy.
In the late 1980s, Plný twice applied unsuccessfully to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In 1989, he began to sit as a model for the figure drawing classes with the aim of earning the then-non-existent title of “Academic Model,” which he invented himself and was officially presented with by the school's chancellor, Jiří T. Kotalík, in the year 2000. Plný says, “I realized that I’d rather be the best model than a mediocre artist.” He nevertheless continued to focus on making his own art.
Work
Drawings and paintings
The main theme in Luboš Plný's art is the human body - its functioning, its limitations, and its mortality. Most of his works could be called “anatomical self-portraits”, in which he mixes drawing, painting and conceptual art with scientific project. He combines color ink with acrylic paint and collage, and includes organic elements such as blood, hair, the ashes of his dead parents, used medical aids, and “evidentiary objects” from his experiments on his own body.
Plný depicts the body, usually human but occasionally animal, in horizontal, vertical, and lateral cross-sections as if looking at it using tomography. He often combines various angles of view in the same picture and creates a precise record of each individual layer: skin, musculature, bones, circulatory system, and organs. Some anatomical details, especially the head and sexual organs, are done with extreme precision, while others are merely sketched or left out entirely. The anatomical cross-sections in Plný's pictures are a montage consisting of drawings made on the basis of 19th-century anatomical guides, X-ray images, photographs of Madonnas, models, or items exhibited at the La Specola anatomical museum in Florence, Italy. He takes images from various eras out of their original context and places them into new relationships with their own personal story. Mostly, he focuses on specific events in his life. He understands his anatomical drawings primarily as a “mental space,” as reconstructions of things we know, rather than representations of what can be seen.
One source of inspiration for Plný was the birth of his son Vincent (2005), which he documented in several of his works. Ever since undergoing surgery to remove a part of his thyroid gland, this organ has been blacked out on his drawings. Sometimes he even includes actual photographs from his operation.
An integral part of each of Plný's drawings is a detailed written record that also acts as his diary. Each drawing contains information on his age in days when he started and finished working on it, marked by a star and a cross. He also systematically records other data such as the exact day and time when he took a break from drawing and started again.