To Bite Unbitingly
25/06/20–16/10/22

In 2008, Vladimír Preclík donated a collection named Vladimír Preclík Gallery to the Hradec Králové Region. He assembled this himself, in order to create a retrospective overview of his entire work, from its beginnings to the mature works.

The statues on display in the town of Jaroměř, and in its surrounding area, were a source of inspiration for Vladimír Preclík and his contemporary artists. This path led him, in 1946, to learn stone masonry and sculpting in the Czech town of Hořice and, in 1950, at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague, where he studied in the atelier of Josef Wagner. His fellow students were Věra and Vladimír Janoušek, Olbram Zoubek, Miloš Chlupáč, Zdeněk Palcr, and Eva Kmentová. The sculptor Zdena Fibichová became his wife.

In 1954, Preclík, along with several classmates and students from Emil Filla‘s atelier of monumental painting, formed a group called Trasa (Route) (1954–1970). The goal of the young artists was to come to terms with the Modernist inspiration of the pre-War arts scene, by expressing a strong relationship to simple, everyday things in their work. However, they also placed an emphasis on neorealism, one of the key post-war trends.

In the 1960s, Preclík worked mostly with wood on a monumental scale. He specialized in the technique of assemblage, not using found or industrial objects, but his own hand-made forms. His work is unique for its method of coloring the surface of the sculptures. Though it is possible to consider his works as abstract, Preclík titled his works with a specific poeticism, which often had an ironic or sarcastic subtext, and left no one wondering about their intention.