Vladimír Popovič — Relocation

The picture Relocation belongs to paintings from the period of so-called “greys” which are characteristic by the minimization of colour scheme expressing the author’s gloomy feeling as a result of the political and social reality occurring in Czechoslovakia after the occupation of the country by the Warsaw Pact troops in 1968. In terms of time, he created this nature of work from mid-1970’s until early 1990’s, after which he returned to a wider colour spectrum. In painting Relocation, the artist works with the shades of white, grey and black, through which he creates a composition where signs of a human are unexpectedly connected (fragments of legs) to nature (silhouettes of mountains). This visual metaphor (legs carrying mountains) materializes through art whatever is not possible in reality. His work contains typical individual symbolics like for instance the frequent motive of triangle evoking Spiš landscape where he comes from. Another sign manifests in this painting, characteristic for his work – a story. In this case, the plot is suggested by an illusive overlap of two pictures creating an impression that the scene we are looking at is only a continuation of the same story, which is enhanced by the marking of both pictorial planes by numerals 1. and 2.

Vladimír Popovič entered the art scene during mid-1960’s, and became known mainly as an author of paper objects and collage with an overlap to action art. He was interested in specific properties of paper that he spontaneously crumpled, folded, made collages, assemblages, pictures-reliefs and actions. Despite the intermedia overlaps in his work, painting and drawing and the study of their mutual relationships remained the centre of his interest until now. His entire works is characteristic by spontaneity, improvisation and the use of coincidence.