Robert Urbásek 

1. december 1965 

The artwork of Robert Urbásek represents the power of abstract painting where an intense expressive colour is combined with a haptic structure of the relief surface.

Those are formed by a system of intertwined strings attached to the canvas. The sisal rope grid is gradually covered by the painting colour. Individual lines and meshes create a rhythm, a compositional layout of the art piece.

Robert Urbásek’s structural paintings have a common language with action painting, the artist's conscious or unconscious interventions in the drying process of the painting colour form the resulting shape of the artwork. Those can be perceived similarly to musical compositions. The listener, like the viewer, appreciates them in their integrity, feels their rhythm and melody without having a detailed knowledge about the musical notation.

This is traceable primarily in the form of protruding lines under which we suspect the change in the fundamental string structure. Nevertheless, light does not have the same essential effect here as it has in the artwork of Lubomír Přibyl. Instead of focusing on the nuances between light and shade, in Urbásek's works, the light shapes the relief structure as a landscape, raised places are illuminated and pits are shrouded in shadow. Therefore, the surface of his paintings excels in great plasticity and reminds us of 3D maps.

The exhibition in Závodný Gallery presents works in two basic colours - yellow and blue. These are part of the group of primary colours from which all other colours can be obtained by mixing. They are located on the opposite sides of the circle of colour range, thus they are in contrast and do complement each other.

In some cases, Robert Urbásek's relief shows an attempt to enter into space. Wooden laths protrude beyond the picture and become part of the wall space. This creates new relationships between the artwork and its immediate surroundings. Straight lines of wooden sticks divide the painting as well as the wall space into individual fields and segments and refer the viewer to the geometric abstraction.

This Mondrian approach –painting defined by lines and fields in a rectangular system - anticipates, associates and creates multiple forms that can be seen in the confined space of the painting and the adjoining wall. The boundary, between the actual artwork and its possible relief, forms blurs in the viewer's imagination.

Robert Urbásek sees the monochrome painting as his artistic program. The combination of action painting elements with a precise geometric concept creates a specific style of this artists.