Jan Znoj - "Aviation sculpture"
Jan Znoj is a Chech sculptor (1905 -1950)whom I found last week on an internet gallery.
What's blowing me away, here, is that "incredible lightness of being" that also characterizes the figures made by my father -- as well as the playful figures that Tiepolo liked to paint on palatial ceilings.
It's an insouciant quality that's hardly ever found in the 20th Century (or anywhere else for that matter -- except maybe the flying asparas of medieval South Asia)
What's blowing me away, here, is that "incredible lightness of being" that also characterizes the figures made by my father -- as well as the playful figures that Tiepolo liked to paint on palatial ceilings.
It's an insouciant quality that's hardly ever found in the 20th Century (or anywhere else for that matter -- except maybe the flying asparas of medieval South Asia)
posted by chris miller at 7:22 AM
2 Comments:
Znoj in slavic languages means "hard work". Do you not feel this piece is a little... labored? :)
If 'labored'means evidence of work without success -- no -- this piece was successful in catching at least one person's attention (me -- from among all the pieces I was browsing that day. But there is something awkward about it -- as if neither that bird nor man will ever fly very far. Didn't the Czech airforce have that same problem when the Third Reich invaded ? Coincidentally -- I happen to know the daughter of one their distinguished pilots -- he spent most of his adult life imprisoned: first by the Nazis, then by the Soviets. (he had a reputation as a poet as well)
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