Editorial board
The Slovak Institute is a permanent venue for presenting Slovak culture in Prague. In cooperation with the Centre for Folk Art Production in Bratislava, it presented a selection of Václav Kautman’s work and initiated a representation of Slovak carving craft at an international folk festival in Prague.
The exhibition of Václav Kautman’s work with the subtitle Wood in Life, Life in Wood taking place at the premises of the Slovak Institute showed the Prague public a selection of the wide collection presented in ÚĽUV Gallery last year (RUD 2/2005, pgs. 24 – 29). Although Kautman was born in Brno and then studied at Prague University of Industrial Art, he found his life and professional as well as family base in Slovakia, in Bratislava. Since 1950 he has worked as an artist and later as a head artist in ÚĽUV, then since 1960s as an assistant and later docent and leader of the Utilitarian Department at the University of Fine Arts in Bratislava.
A different face of wood was presented in Prague by Vladimír Morávek, a photographer and graduate of the Camera Department at the Film and TV School of the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), in Slovakia known as a Slovak TV cameraman in Bratislava interested in wood carving. The idea of participating in the 3rd year of the International Folk Festival ‘Pražský jarmark’ (Prague Swap Meet) was based on the idea of presenting the Slovak carving craft and creating a statue made from a more than two-meter-long piece of wood for Prague during the time of the festival. The topic of a clown was selected based on topics closely familiar to the author. The sculpture he carved in Prague will remain there. A permanent exposition of his clown can be seen in Vojanovy Sady area of Prague.