[7] Thanks to his youth spent in the countryside, Vladimír Janoušek perceived the functionality of folk architecture, the local pottery and stonemasonry tradition, as well as the sculptures in nearby Kuks and Hořice.

Vladimír Janoušek suffered from diabetes and in the mid-1980s the disease complicated his life considerably, but he was finally broken by the ban on his exhibition in Brno in 1986, which he had carefully prepared.

[25] He rejected the vulgar descriptiveness of Socialist Realism and sought as a starting point the generalization of human types and the abstracting order of compositions originating in the Renaissance.

[11] In the second half of 1960s, he still turned his interest to the elements and Universe ( The Sun, 1964–1965, Sailboat, 1969, Piece of Earth, Cloud, 1971, Fire, 1972),[26] but the crushing pressure of the Communist regime, which was impossible to resist, created a state of permanent overload and a sense of abyss and fall with no way back.

[20] The subject of Janoušek's sculptures became a struggle and deviation from the authentic centre of gravity and established social rules, where man ceased to be the measure of values, and inevitability of fall and death.

The relief deals primarily with the internal links of the figures and their relationship to the architecture, and is characterised by smooth transitions of convex volumes and harmony of form.

He was one of the leading representatives of the revival process, who rejected the official and typified concept of "socialist man" and even in his reliefs with the theme of the work referred rather to the civilism of Group 42, active in 1942–1948.

In 1958-1960 he created a monumental statue of Karel Hynek Mácha for Doksy, based on a concrete form, but conceived as an unconventional metaphor of a solitary man absorbed in himself,[34] to which he subordinated formal elements such as drapery, gesture or the positioning of the torso and head.

[35] Although Janoušek's teachers were Karel Dvořák and Josef Wagner, and of the Czech sculptors he was most influenced by Otto Gutfreund, he turned for inspiration to the forerunners of modern sculpture such as Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Lynn Chadwick, Anthony Caro, Germaine Richier, César or Yves Klein, and later also metal sculptors (Alexander Calder, David Smith, Richard Stankiewicz).

[41] As early as 1957, during his collaboration with Jiří Novák, he learned to weld metal[34] and realized some of his earlier drawings as sculptures in which a wire construction was attached to a figurative base.

[44] Janoušek's welded sculptures, in which he highlighted their existential dimension and emphasised the role of individual freedom as a prerequisite for creation, represent a new level of expression.

The sculpture Untitled (Pendulum) (1967-1969), depicting a seated figure without a chair with its head turned downwards, which cannot be returned to its natural position, expresses Janoušek's inner feeling of the perversity of values.

Pendulums that appeared in Czech poetic poetry (V. Nezval: Prisoner-Madrigal, František Halas: Flood-Hunger) or in surrealist paintings by J. Štyrský, F. Janoušek, B. Lacina or F. Zykmund, became a metaphor of human finitude.

In addition to Janoušek, Radoslav Kratina's variables or some Karel Nepraš´s sculptures equipped with bearings and a crank (Feel free to rotate) had a similar purpose.

Its static is disturbed by thin iron rods of hidden pendulums inside, that animate the dead matter with their movement like the pulse of the earth.

[4][52] The sculpture is also the starting point for the next series of flat reliefs composed of elements mounted on a vertical panel, of which the opening Iron Landscape (1969) represents a fundamental shift in the composition of Janoušek's works.

The 1970 Expo was opened by two sculptors, Vladimir Janoušek and Tarō Okamoto, a member of Abstraction-Création, who created the informal logo of the entire exhibition, the sculpture Tower of the Sun.

At the same time, Vladimír Janoušek created another monumental sculpture Metalworkers and Metallurgists (10 figures, 3.5 x 8.5 x 1.8 m) for the cultural house in Kladno, but due to the political situation of the emerging "normalization" (according to official document Lessons from the Crisis Development, issued by the Communist party) it was no longer allowed to be installed in its original place and remained in the garden of his studio in Košíře.

Thanks to the favour of architects, he was able to realise some commissions for public spaces outside Prague (Kladno, Havlíčkův Brod, Prostějov, Jablůnka, Třebíč, Olomouc, Most, Czechoslovak Cultural Centre Berlin).

[58] Janoušek's pictorial reliefs after 1970 have backgrounds treated with paint, drawing, engraving and sand structures and movable parts made of steel and aluminium sheet, plywood, fiberboard or plexiglas.

Janoušek's works from this period are difficult to classify into traditional categories - the sculptures are constructed essentially in a drawing manner, but their common element is movement, which has a meaning-making function.

[61] His reliefs were also loosely related to the civilism of Group 42 and especially to František Gross, in whose paintings urban realities intertwine with the human figure as grotesque tragic mechanisms.

[3] His sculptures, composed most often of pieces of aluminum sheet and joined by screws in parallel layers, some with sliding rails, sometimes fixed against a background with an imaginary landscape and framed, offer the viewer their own interpretations in accordance with the sculptor's wish to engage them as potential creators.

Janoušek uses them to incorporate his personal feelings into literary, mythological, biblical and philosophical stories, inviting the viewer to intervene in them and thus partly take their plight upon himself.

Although the moving parts can be set in extreme and improbable poses, the basic shape is fixed - the fall cannot be changed into a take-off, and the fatalistic layout cannot be transcended.

[66] The assumed active participation of the viewer in the manipulation of the sculptures may turn harmony into disharmony, gracefulness into unsightliness, seriousness into grotesqueness, but no one can deny the author's intention.

Dark reliefs, complemented by black beams, are lightened by figures carved from plexiglas, which bring a new dimension by enhancing the lighting effects.

[3] In his drawings he also dealt with the representation of movement in flat sculpture or relief in aluminium sheet, where the connection of screws allowed for manipulation and reconfiguration of the posture, but only within a defined space.

The people in Janoušek's drawings are nomads wandering aimlessly through the landscape, blind men with white canes that make it difficult to walk, or a crowd attacking an invisible enemy.

[71] Thanks to the artist's sensitivity, imagination, experience and knowledge, which is of general validity, his works raise questions that concern the basic feelings of being and the relationship of individual to men, space and time.