Seasons End / ISHO House

Czech sculptor Eva Kmentová (1928–1980) finished sculpture studies at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague in 1951. Her pursuit of a modernity without pathos and without symbolic subtexts was reflected in her choice of sculptural ideals: Pablo Picasso, Henri Laurens, and above all Fernand Léger. Kmentová’s first solo exhibition was in Prague in 1963. Three years later she started to imprint and cast in plaster first everyday objects and then parts of her own body. This uncompromising opening up of ideational structures found effective expression in the environment “Traces” with plaster casts of soles which Eva Kmentová created as a pioneering work in 1970. At the exhibition Europe Europe in Bonn in 1994, which finally gave the Central- and East-European avantgardes their due in the overall context of 20th-century art, the public had the chance to appreciate crucial importance of the sculptures of Eva Kmentová, which transcends the specific Czech situation of the sixties and seventies.

Eva Kmentová, Marie, 1969, sculpture made of asbestos cement, overall height/length 140 cm. Courtesy of the artist.