Jan Švankmajer

The filmmaker, object artist, illustrator and poet Jan Švankmajer was born in Prague in 1934. Since the 1960s he has predominantly developed animated short films, the surreal, nightmarish pictorial language of which, combined with the painstakingly developed “stop-motion” technique, caused a great sensation. At Kunstraum Dornbirn Švankmajer presents objects, surreal artefacts reminiscent of collections on natural history and preserved animals, as well as drawings that on closer inspection swiftly turn out to be “absurd” creatures. Alongside finding inspiration from literature, Jan Švankmajer also turns to nature and natural history for his subject matter. His ongoing project on an “unsystematic anatomy” is the culmination of this critical and ironic inquiry into nature and evolution.