Image: Zdenek Kriz, “Running Tree,” pastel
An illustrated talk by Marcy Arlin and friends showcasing the work of Czech artist Zdenek Kriz in the social, artistic, psychological, and cultural context of the surrealist movement under the communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia, focusing on the resilience and talent of a dissident and refugee. Zdenek’s artwork draws on the Czech folklore and its satiric outlook. Approximately 30 of his artworks will be presented, along with slides of lighting designs in New York.
Zdenek Kriz (1950, Prague – 2016, New York) trained in painting and design at Prague’s School of Applied Arts and later studied film technology. Early in his career, he created bold visual work for the Theatre of Film and Music—until the 1970s, when his politically charged paintings and satirical ink drawings led to a government ban on exhibiting. In the mid-1970s, he joined the legendary multimedia theater Laterna Magika, touring across Europe and Canada. During a 1983 tour, he hid his canvases in costume bins and defected in Belgium, eventually settling in New York City. There, while continuing to paint, he became a sought-after lighting designer in the Off-Off-Broadway scene, collaborating with OBIE-winning companies and earning a reputation for painterly, atmospheric designs. After the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, he finally regained a Czech passport in 1994 and returned home, turning to pastels to capture the renewed landscapes of a country he had once been forced to flee. He was married to Marcy Arlin until his premature death ten years ago.
Tickets: $5 (plus processing fee) available through Eventbrite. Seats are limited, on first-come first-served basis.
ABOUT
MARCY ARLIN was a theater professor at the City University of New York and is now a writer of science fiction and fantasy. Her work has been published in Daily Science Fiction, Diabolical Plots, Conspiracies & Cryptids, and elsewhere. She is a member of Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers (BSFW). She met artist Zdenek Kriz while working at Henry Street Settlement, where he was the resident lighting designer. As Artistic Director of the OBIE-winning Immigrants’ Theatre Project, Marcy has worked with hundreds of award-winning actors as well as those at the beginning of their careers, including actors from over 90 countries and backgrounds. She produced and directed the groundbreaking Czech Plays in Translation series, featuring 20th-century plays and post-1989 new works, resulting in the book Czech Plays: 7 New Works, published by Martin E. Segal Publications. She also directed plays and taught classes through the Fulbright Program in Romania and the Czech Republic.
This event is organized by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), New York Chapter, with support of BBLA.