Informel

What is informel?

Informel is a form of abstract art concerned not with a pleasing shape or colour but above all with the material itself and its structure. The painter works with matter, layers it, gouges into it, lets chance and the traces of damage take effect. The result tends to be a rough, broken surface that seems to carry the memory of time and touch.

When and how did it come about?

Informel was born in Europe after the Second World War, at a time when artists were looking for a way to express the anxiety and shock of the post-war world. They turned away from regular shapes and put their faith in gesture, material and chance. In Czechoslovakia it then became the principal unofficial tendency — work that lived largely outside the official, state-supported current.

Who are its most important figures?

Leading Czech figures of informel include Mikuláš Medek, whose canvases join an existential mood to a richly worked surface, and Vladimír Boudník, who experimented with printmaking and turned even chance traces of material into artworks. Both are today among the most distinctive names of Czech post-war abstraction.

How does it do on the art market?

Czech informel is highly valued among collectors, because it represents bold, free work made in an unfree time. Works by Mikuláš Medek and Vladimír Boudník are fixtures of the domestic market and are sought after at auction and in private collections alike.

— Anna Pulkertová, founder of Art Part Club