Alex Mlynárčik | Altars, Paintings and Drawings 

curated by Ivan Jančár

18 Sep – 18 Dec 2026

ZAHORIAN & VAN ESPEN Mierová & Carlton Savoy

Already at the age of sixteen, Alex Mlynárčik (born in 1934 in Žilina) was sentenced to one year in prison for attempting to escape to Austria. He was captured while still in the Soviet occupation zone and sent to a prison in České Budějovice. He regarded the only positive trace of this traumatic experience as the scratches and inscriptions carved with fingernails into the prison walls — messages left by anonymous people to other anonymous people, silent testimonies of human presence and hope. This experience became a recurring motif throughout his artistic work.

A decisive moment in his life came with his meeting with the influential French theorist Pierre Restany in Paris in 1964. Restany, a central figure of Nouveau Réalisme, recognized Mlynárčik’s exceptional talent and welcomed him into the circle of artists he supported. Gradually, Alex Mlynárčik developed his own distinctive and unmistakable artistic language, based, among other things, on actively involving ordinary people in the process of creating an artwork. Initially, this took the form of inscriptions and messages written directly onto exhibited works; later, it evolved into large-scale events involving hundreds of participants. These živohry (“living games” or “living performances”) represented a fundamental shift — the “person from the street” became an equal partner in the creation of the artwork. Mlynárčik’s actions celebrated the ordinary human being, their dignity, joy, and ability to participate in shaping the meaning of the world.

Among his many projects are Permanent Manifestations, Temptation, Villa of Mysteries, The Procession of Empress Theodora, Venuses and Signs, Homage to Truth, Friction, Donation, Message, Graphicon, Gardens of Contemplation, The Three Graces, Pax et Gaudium, Snow Festival, Polymusical Space, Festivals of “Living Games”, Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, Day of Joy – If All the Trains in the World, Edgar Degas Memorial, and Eva’s Wedding. The essence of these works lay in celebrations and festivals — exceptional moments that unite all cultures and religions. In Mlynárčik’s understanding, they were transformed into Days of Joy, celebrations of life as one of the highest values.

After the beginning of the period of normalization in 1972, Mlynárčik was expelled from the Union of Slovak Visual Artists. He lost the opportunity to exhibit in galleries, and his works could no longer be acquired for public collections. As a counterbalance to this reality, he created his own imaginary clay kingdom from elsewhere — the Duchampian ready-made state of Argíllia. It had (and still has) its own ministers, ambassadors, university, currency, bonds, and postage stamps. He himself described it in these words: “Yes, the power of Argíllia is a mockery of the egoism, emptiness, and arrogance of real Power, which it renders powerless.”

From 1972 onward, he collaborated with architects Viera Mecková and Ľudovít Kupkovič on the project VAL. Roads and Aspects of Tomorrow. Over eighteen years, they jointly created eight extraordinarily precise prospective architectural projects — visions that could not be realized at the time of their creation but were intended for the future.

The exhibition at Zahorian & Van Espen presents several works that the public has previously had no opportunity to encounter. The oldest of them are the recently restored Prison Landscapes. Cell No. 98, České Budějovice Prison, 1951–1964, capturing a fragment of the wall of the cell in which he was imprisoned. From 1962 come three previously unseen and unpublished paintings: Composition (mixed media on wood, 170×120cm), Black Composition II (oil on canvas, 130×70cm), and Composition in Pink (oil on canvas, 130×100cm). They represent the period of 1962–1963, when his work was strongly influenced by the impulses of geometric abstraction, which shortly afterwards, around 1964, transformed into an informel approach.

Approximately two years ago, Alex showed me five wooden boards on which he had begun working in 1966. He then put them aside and left them untouched for many decades. This year, at the age of ninety-one, he returned to them and transformed them into five minimalist and extraordinarily evocative Altars. They are accompanied by candles and the forty-part Renaissance motet Spem in alium by the composer Thomas Tallis. After more than half a century, a work was thus created that seems to complete a single creative arc — quiet, focused, and deeply contemplative.

The exhibition also includes a presentation of the new book Drawings and Studies by Alex Mlynárčik 1956–1963, which I prepared together with Mária Mauzou Sumráková. The publication, supplemented by Mlynárčik’s biography, presents numerous previously unknown drawings from this early period of his artistic development and offers a new perspective on the formation of one of the most significant figures in Slovak visual art./ Ivan Jančár