Luboš Plný

Luboš Plný (born 4 November 1961) is a Czech painter and conceptual artist, usually classified as a creator of art brut.

In 1983, he did his basic military service, but the stressful environment caused him to suffer from depression, sleep disorders, and hallucinations, and he repeatedly had problems with insubordination.

He painted tin soldiers and was a janitor at a department store, a sales clerk at an antiquarian bookshop, and a security guard at a gallery.

He began to take a deeper interest in the causes of his insomnia, studied medical literature and anatomical guides, and attended autopsies.

He combines color ink with acrylic paint and collage, and includes organic elements such as blood, hair, the ashes of his dead parents, used medical aids, and “evidentiary objects” from his experiments on his own body.

He often combines various angles of view in the same picture and creates a precise record of each individual layer: skin, musculature, bones, circulatory system, and organs.

Luboš Plný's first and the most important project that might be called “conceptual” was the six-year period during which he worked as a model at Prague's Academy of Fine Arts with the goal of obtaining the title of “Academic Model.” During this time, which was the average length of study at the Academy, he perfected his posture, studied art history, and collected a broad range of doctor's assessments, recommendations from leading artists, or photographs showing him in famous poses from the history of art (Myron's Discobolus, Rodin's Thinker, Leonardo da Vinci's John the Baptist, Jacques-Louis David's Death of Marat...).

In 1999 his request was approved by the school's arts council and the following year chancellor Jiří T. Kotalík officially presented him with the title of “Academic Model” at the graduation ceremony at the Monastery of St. Agnes of Bohemia.

He keeps records of his illnesses, treatments, and bodily processes – for instance fluid intake or output, or the “quality” of his bellybutton lint and its relationship to temperature, the current weather, or type of clothing (Navel Journal).

In Father and Mother, he worked with his parents’ ashes sealed in a glass Petri dish, around which he drew a spiral in miniature writing, where he recorded every single day of their lives.

Luboš Plný also creates three-dimensional assemblages of “erotic aids.” Luboš Plný has been photographed by Jaroslav Brabec, Mario Del Curto (who exhibited a series of portraits as part of the Art Brut Live exhibition at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague in 2015), Bruno Decharme, Vladimír Štěpanský, František Vaňásek and Martin Watch (as part of the series Unique Individuals).