Fair Little Doves

The originality of Anna Hulačová´s work is based on preciseness, sophisticated sensuousness and comprehensibility of the art vocabulary and above all on the way she revives medieval iconography, the imaginative world of folk art, feasts, myths, rituals and religious liturgy. Hulačová does not observe this world from a safe distance but she simply stays an ordinary, essential part or it, virtually a live impulse standing in full light. Not only as a performer of her shared private rituals but above all as an innovative sculptor with experience of an art restorer and someone who holds traditional handicrafts and work with natural materials in high regard. Anna Hulačová with a natural freedom and in a good sense of the word ignores the norms of sculptural groups dozing for the last hundred years in the shade of Modernism.

Hulačová created an installation of new sculptures for the Gallery 35M2 which deals with the Marian symbols not only in relation to the Christian history of depicting of the Virgin Mary but also in relation to universal ideas of symbols related to gods of fertility and motherhood. The Madonna becomes the joyful and knowing central point of a paradise of rare flowers and animals, in which the male world is represented only by anonymous torsos, in a sort of an evil, bizarre echo of the triumphant style paraphrasing Classical art.

Ages ago figural sculpture became an intellectual play and a private matter indifferent to religion. Unfortunately, sacral figural sculpture in its progressive form has perhaps completely disappeared or just sublimated into other secular forms, but Anna Hulačová´s sculptures and live performances reflect besides honest doubts and grim thoughts also some kind of passionate and immaculate firmness. It may seem slightly mannerist, however, it shows firmness and today a very rare belief that sculpture in principle wholly belongs to religious art.

Michal Pěchouček