Magdalena Jetelová (born 4 June 1946) is a Czech installation artist and land artist, who has achieved international acclaim. Known mainly for her environmental installation works, Jetelová combines light, architecture, photography, sculpture, and installation to explore the relationship between humans, objects, and space. Her work has been exhibited in various prominent galleries internationally such as Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Tate Gallery London, Museum of Modern Art, 21er Haus, and the Martin-Gropius-Bau. Her work is also in the collection of Hirschorn Museum, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museum Ludwig.
Life and education
Jetelová was born in Semily in the former Czechoslovakia in 1946. She studied sculpture at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts from 1965–71, taking a break to briefly study abroad at the Brera Academy in Milan from 1967–68, where she worked under the Italian sculptor Marino Marini. She moved to Munich in the mid-1980's, where she participated in Documenta 8, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition on display from 12 June 1987, through 20 September 1987, this time focusing on the sociopolitical responsibility of art from a post modern perspective. In 1988 Jetelová was a Visiting Professor at the Akademie der Bildende Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) in München, Germany. She then moved on to become a Professor Sommerakademie (International Summer Academy of Fine Arts) in Salzburg, Austria in 1989. From 1990–2004 Jetelová was a professor at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Germany, and from 2004–2011 she was again a professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in München, Germany. During that time, in 2008, she was also a Visiting Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czech Republic. She is currently living in Munich, Düsseldorf, and Prague.
Work
Her early work was significantly influenced by the Prague Spring, often dealing with themes of power and dominance in public spaces. Through the 1980s, she lived and worked in the Tichá Šárka district in Prague, working on pieces exploring social distress and spatial conflict, such as Marking by Red Smoke, Prague. She emigrated to West Germany in 1985, and her studio was destroyed. Later works include large-scale wooden sculptures of tables and chairs. Jetelová reproduces and often distorts simple everyday items in large wooden objects in order to explore ideas of regimentation of public space. An exhibit of hers for the Museum Kampa gained attention for floating down the Vltava river due to a flood and ending up near Mělník. Since 1986, she has experimented with outdoor light and laser projection.
Her iconic sculpture Place, commonly known as "The Giant's Chair", was installed at the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail in 1986. The sculpture's creation was explained as: "not constructed on-site but made at the Sculpture Shed in Bristol, where the oak was delivered to and the joints constructed. The timber was then seasoned on-site in the forest for some six months before being erected using a 10 tonne crane to move the limbs, which each weighed around four tonnes." It was originally intended to last a short time before being set on fire, instead the artwork remained on its hilltop position for 29 years and was visited by millions of visitors from all over the world. It was finally removed in 2015, where the four tonnes logs were going to be converted into charcoal, an ancient tradition common to the Forest of Dean.
In her monumental 1992 installation Domestication of the Pyramid, she placed a pyramid made of red quartz sand inside the architecturally ornate Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. In the next two years it was also installed in Dublin, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Rottweil, and Warsaw. The red quartz sand takes over the museum space, piling over railings, stairways, and hallways, falling through the space in a way that feels like an avalanche. The work served as a visual metaphor for the Western tradition of taking important parts of our, and others, history and placing them inside of museums.