At the age of 87, the artist Adriena Šimotová has died today

Prague - This morning in Prague, significant Czech painter and graphic artist Adriena Šimotová passed away at the age of 87. Her niece Michaela Šetlíková informed the Czech Press Agency. Adriena Šimotová was among the prominent representatives of the Czech art scene in the second half of the 20th century, and she is renowned abroad as well. Šimotová's work is closely tied to her life experiences. It projects her joys as well as her pain and the tragedies she lived through.
Šimotová was one of the artists who could only exhibit their works unofficially during the time of normalization. Nevertheless, her work was known abroad; in 1970, she received a gold medal at the biennial in Florence, and in 1979 a grand prize at the biennial in Ljubljana. In 1991, she was honored with the Knight's Order for Literature and Art in France, and later she received recognition at home.
In 2005, she was among the first to receive the Minister of Culture's award for her contribution to the visual arts. Šimotová was also respected by her colleagues, including younger artists, which is evidenced by the award for artists over 35 years old, which Šimotová also received as one of the first, initiated as a counterbalance to most domestic visual arts awards intended for young artists.
Her lyrical paintings from the 1960s were close to informal art. She painted figurative themes, explored landscapes, but later definitively returned to the figure. The death of her husband, painter Jiří John (1923 to 1972), in the 1970s marked a significant turning point in both Šimotová's personal and creative life.
She abandoned classical painting techniques and chose direct physical touch as her primary means of expression. She transitioned to installations and spatial realizations, focusing on the human figure and face.
She worked with textiles as well as paper, cutting, crumpling, tearing, and shaping it in various ways. This resulted in delicate paper sculptures - impressions of faces, palms, feet, and the entire body, as well as hanging reliefs composed of many layers of translucent or carbon paper.
In her works, one can find allegory, the transience of being, things, and relationships, the continuity of time, and the poetic representation of human themes. Although in recent years Šimotová was limited by the physical capabilities of her body, she never ceased creating, and new works depicting the human body continued to emerge - increasingly subtle and intimate, as it became more challenging for the author to move. Three years ago, she held an exhibition on the occasion of her 85th birthday at the Museum Kampa, featuring older works, alongside the Rudolfinum Gallery, which displayed her then most recent creations.

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Šimotová became famous mainly for her unconventional work with paper

Adriena Šimotová Johnová, who passed away today at the age of 87, was one of the most significant figures in contemporary Czech visual art for nearly half a century. Her name is also recognized in European cultural consciousness. In her work, one can find allegory, continuity of time, transience of being, things, and relationships, and above all, representation of human destinies.
The work of painter, graphic artist, and illustrator Adriena Šimotová reflects her personal experiences, joys, and the tragedies she has lived through. It is profoundly existential work, consistently dealing with the human condition.
Strong experiences from encounters with the death of her husband, painter Jiří John (1923 to 1972), and more recently from the death of her son, led her to a more intense exploration of her own inner self. "All this manifested in my work through an increasing metaphysical dimension. It could even be said that there's a certain spirituality to it," Šimotová admitted. But she added that her starting point was always positive. "No matter how I look at it, my life was as happy as it was unhappy, and that is not little," the artist expressed.
Šimotová was born on August 6, 1926, in Prague. She studied at a graphic secondary school and the Academy of Art, Architecture, and Design in the studio of Professor Josef Kaplický, where she also met her husband. From the 1960s, she was among the artists around the UB 12 group, the New Group, and the renewed Artists' Association.
She overcame the crisis after her husband's death in the 1970s through work. That was when she also changed her expressive means. She stopped painting. "I felt I had to engage in it with my whole body," she described the new style based on physical touch. She began working with drawing, space, and focusing on the human figure and face. She utilized textiles and other materials, primarily paper, which she cut, crumpled, tore, and shaped into delicate paper sculptures. This resulted in human impressions - of faces, palms, feet, and the entire body, as well as hanging reliefs made up of many layers of translucent or carbon paper, and paintings on glass using pigment technique.
Her new work received attention and became one of the breakthrough artistic events of the late 1980s, when unofficial artists began returning to exhibition halls. During the previous regime, Šimotová had very few opportunities and hardly exhibited officially. She never engaged in committed art, and thus sustained herself as best as she could. During difficult times, interest abroad helped her, where she gained recognition and numerous awards at international competitions.
There is great interest in Šimotová's work both at home and abroad. It is represented in the National Gallery in Prague and in several Czech and foreign galleries and museums. Šimotová is one of the few Czech female artists whose work is included in the collections of the Paris Museum of Modern Art, known as the Centre Georges Pompidou. France, where she often exhibited and worked in the studio of the Pompidou Centre in recent years, named her a knight of the Order for Arts and Literature.
In recognition of her lifelong attitudes and artistic creation, Šimotová received a Medal of Merit in 1997 and the Minister of Culture's Award in 2005. The breadth of her artistic range was highlighted for art lovers by a major retrospective exhibition at the Prague Veletržní Palace in 2001.