Born 17th March 1952. From 1967 to 1971 Marie Michaela Sechtlova studied at the Secondary School of Atrs in Prague. From 1971 to 1977 she continued her studies at the College of Applied Arts in Prague, at the studio of graphics and illustration under professors Zdenek Sklenar, Jiri Anderle and Jiri Mikula. She concentrate on free graphics, bookplates and book illustration. She was awarded to her display of bookplates in the town of Chrudim (1983) and for her tiny graphics at the 11th biannual exhibition in St. Niklaas (Belgium). Her bookplates were also honored in Concorso Lago Maggiore.
Poetry becomes spiritual the moment you see the graphics sheets of Marie
Michaela Sechtlova. To penetrate into this world saturated with complicated
ideas and fragile relations, is almost impossible. In time however, you
discover the depths of those eternal ideas whose existences touch perhaps
every man surrounded by civilization. The symbols of eternity, human
tenderness, forgetfulness and memories create the world the lady-artist draws
you into, and surround you like solid cobweb which makes you consider and
realize the strength of the picture.
Masterly commanding the litographic technique she makes it possible to take full advantage of the expressive affects of the form without preferring it to the contents. In other words: the cycle "Masks", "The Store Of Illusions" and "Pierots" starts from the world of theatre. This particular world complies with Marie Michaela Sechtlova's disposition and liking in dramatic action and comparison with rises a certain event of an individual in space and time to generally valid human sense. It is a special and determining grace of contrast that appears in these graphic sheets. On a colorful background of them you will find a condensed story with many details and episodes. You are not however drawn directly onto the stage of life but onto this backstage, into confines between a dream and reality, into a place where a man both at once changes into and removes his mask. There is nothing manneristic, being an end in itself, nothing artfully coded, ununderstandable or narrowly subjectivist.
"Art does not come from what you learn from outside but it must come from inside, from innermost conviction, from the depth of soul and feeling." (J. Preisler)
This idea pronounced by J. Preisler in 1913 can be fully applied to the contemporary creative activity of Marie Michaela Sechtlova. The significance of her graphic expression consist, first of all, in her ability to fill that from mastered from outside with the contents of her poetic heart. Hers is the soul of humble and noble creative activity, compassionate, fragile and at the same time deep.
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Email to: sechtlova@seznam.cz