František Hodonský – The Landscape's Silent Voice

Two dozen large-format paintings and several sculptures by leading Czech painter František Hodonský were on view at Artium as part of the exhibition The Landscape's Silent Voice. Inspired by the floodplain forests of his beloved South Moravia, Hodonský draws deeply from the landscape of his childhood. "South Moravia is the landscape of my youth. It’s where my first paintings were born—and really, where my journey with painting began," says Hodonský. "My father, a painter himself, used to take me to the Pálava region and nearby surroundings, showing me sources of inspiration. I was eight years old, sketching reeds, vegetation, water, and bird islands along the ponds. These themes have stayed with me ever since."

František Hodonský has focused on landscape painting since the 1960s and has since become one of the leading Czech artists in the genre. His work also extends to large-scale woodcuts, in which not only the printed image but also the carved matrix becomes a vivid, coloured relief. The exhibition, like much of Hodonský’s oeuvre, was dominated by the colour green—a distilled essence of his lifelong creative journey.

Curator of the exhibition: Ivan Neumann