Jiří Myszak: The Fountain - University Museum VSB-TUO

Name: The Fountain

Author: Jiří Myszak (architectural cooperation Vladimír Svoboda)

Dating: 1979–1982

Location: in the exterior in the atrium of the VŠB-TUO dormitories in Ostrava-Poruba

Execution: a fountain made of glazed fireclay consisting of six segmented columns in ochre and blue shades, with a height ranging from 127 to 223 cm placed in a circular water tank with a diameter of 5 m

ROUND SHAPES WITHOUT WATER

The Fountain installation is a group of six profiled columns made up of differently shaped ceramic discs. The columns are irregularly placed in a circular tank with a raised curb and paved ceramic, blue glazed bottom. The individual segments of the columns are placed on top of each other and inside are joined and reinforced with concrete filling; their surface is glazed in creamy, ochre, and blue shades. The water was initially running down from the tops of the columns and was collected in a tank.

The Fountain belongs to Myszak’s ceramic art collection. It is a purely decorative work which was supposed to decorate the atrium at the student halls of residence and to liven up the atmosphere of the space with the presence of an area of flowing water. Today, the work of art is no longer connected to an element of water, and it revives the walk-through atrium mostly due to its shape and colour. As for its creation in terms of time, the work went through similar delays as many other art pieces: Jiří Myszak won the selection procedure by beating a design by Karel Vašut in the autumn of 1979. The deadlines for the work delivery to the site, the finances, as well as the handicrafts workshops that were expected to glaze and fire the ceramics, changed several times. After other difficulties with the installation, The Fountain was finally approved in the summer of 1982.

Myszak’s decorative work is, despite its simplicity, a proof of his elemental sense for sculptural shape. The author’s work is characterized by flowing, smooth modelling, regardless of whether he created the curves of the female body or the concave or convex shapes of non-figurative forms. Many of his fireclay works respect the raw colour tones of clay, but he can also work in fine coloured compositions.

However, one more “invisible” work remains on the Poruba campus: the space was supposed to be, together with The Fountain, fitted with eighteen planters with some plastic decorated surface. Today, it remains a mystery whether this concurrently created work had ever been made and installed. The witnesses no longer speak, and The Fountain is the only object found in period photographs.

Courtyard of dormitory buildings with the Fountain, 2015, photo by Roman Polášek

Fountain with background of the building in its original color scheme, 2015, photo by Jakub Ivánek

Fountain in the evening, photo by Roman Polášek

Fountain in the original setting of the dormitory

Courtyard of university dormitories with the Fountain

Fountain with water in the 1980s, AMO archive, photographs by Petr Sikula

Fountain upon completion, Archive of Jiří Myszak

Installation of the Fountain, archive of Jiří Myszak

Jiří Myszak with helper during the work on the installation of the Fountain, archive of Jiří Myszak

Jiří Myszak

(1925–1990)

Work: The Fountain

The sculptor Jiří Myszak (1925–1990) was born in the fortress town of Terezín in the northern Bohemia. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts (1945–1950) in Prague under supervision of Karel Pokorný and Jan Lauda. In this way, he received a classical sculpture training that marked his initial work. He moved to Ostrava just before his graduation (1949). It was at a time when the massive post-war development of the city was being considered, which followed upon the reconstruction and expansion of the traditional heavy industry. Jiří Myszak had been given a great job opportunity, and together with Vladislav Gajda, they were asked to complete one of the first monumental tasks that consisted of the fittings on a building of flats on Hlavní třída (Main Boulevard) in the oldest district of Poruba, with allegorical figures entitled Industry, Culture and Agriculture. Also, he and Gajda had something in common – they were both Lauda’s students. And also, both Myszak’s teachers worked on the decoration of important public buildings in Ostrava at the time of the First Republic. Another principal task for Myszak and Vlastimil Večeřa was a fitting of an attic on the front facade of the newly built Vítkovice Ironworks House of Culture (then Vítkovice Ironworks and Engineering Works of Klement Gottwald, n.c., now the City of Ostrava House of Culture) with six figures in 1959–1960. Other monumental sculptural works of art followed, either in stone or increasingly more often in fireclay or finer ceramics. In the 1960s and in addition to clearly readable figural works, he started to devote himself to abstract forms – but he continued to make good use of the full volume and generously modelled mostly smooth shape. This ethos is common for both his concepts of the female body and non-figural objects.

Ostrava became Myszak’s main place of life and work until he was excluded from participation in major public space contracts in the seventies for his ideological unwillingness to submit to the communist regime. The family members recall that at that time he did not even feel like leaving his house-studio in Ostrava-Zábřeh. If he managed to get some work, it was – in the spirit of normalization – some „non-ideological,“ decorative or for utilitarian objects. They were most often jardinieres, which, on the other hand, is evidence of the decreasing funds for sculpture in the urban space. In the 1980s, Myszak attempted to recreate an ideologically motivated human figure (the figure of a schoolgirl Discoveries of Our Age / Atomic Age, approx. 1986), but it is obvious that it was a dictate that the author failed to fulfil. Today, we must do without some of Myszak’s works of art, especially those made of fireclay; many of those that found their place in public space were damaged or literally smashed.