Sculptor Magdalena Jetelová will celebrate her eightieth birthday

Magdalena Jetelová

Photographer and architect Magdalena Jetelová, who will celebrate her eightieth birthday on June 4, is among the most successful Czech artists of the present day. She is, for example, the author of several artistic spatial installations exhibited in prestigious galleries across Europe and in the United States. Her work has been presented in numerous foreign institutions and at art exhibitions, such as London’s Tate, the Sydney Biennale, and exhibitions at London’s Riverside Studios or New York’s MoMA since the mid-1980s.

Since 1985, Jetelová has been living in Germany for an extended period, where she received the Lovis Corinth Prize in 2006, among other distinctions. In Prague, her famous sculpture Chair on the Vltava was installed in 2006 in front of the Kampa Museum in the Sova Mills.

Jetelová grew up in Semily and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1971 at the beginning of normalization. She participated in several exhibitions outside the official galleries, placing her outside the then-official culture. In the 1980s, she realized land art conceptual projects (temporary outdoor projects) only for friends, and her work Realization in Šárka is also well-known. Her projects have always been based on active work with a specific place defined by architecture, urban environment, and landscape, often focusing on issues of power, political exploitation, and the obligation not to forget.

Before her emigration, Jetelová left a project for underground gardening for Jižní Město in Prague. Her most famous project is the Domestication of Pyramids, realized in several locations across Europe. From 1990 to 2004, she taught at the State Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, and from 2004 to 2011, she was at the academy in Munich.

After the establishment of an independent Czech Republic, Jetelová served as a consultant to the Council of Prague Castle for three years. Already in 1993, her installation in the Belvedere Summer Palace was officially seen in the Czech Republic for the first time. Exhibitions of her work can still be visited in recent years. In 2017, the National Gallery provided her with space in the Small Hall at the Trade Fair Palace in Prague, where the installation Touch of the Era was created. And in 2021, a six-month exhibition took place at the Regional Gallery in Liberec, Transformations and Places of Space, which focused on depicting the past of former spa facilities.