Sculptor Magdalena Jetelová will celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday

Prague - Sculptor, photographer, and architect Magdalena Jetelová, born on June 4, 1946, is among the most successful contemporary Czech artists. She is the author of many conceptual spatial installations for prestigious galleries in Europe and the United States. Her work has been presented in numerous foreign institutions and at art exhibitions since the mid-1980s, including London's Tate, the Sydney Biennale, and exhibitions at London’s Riverside Studios and New York’s MoMA. Since 1985, she has been living in Germany, where she received the Lovis Corinth Prize in 2006. In Prague, she became famous for her sculpture Chair on the Vltava in front of the Kampa Museum in the Sovovy Mlyny, installed in March 2006.

Jetelová comes from Semily and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1971 at the beginning of normalization. However, her participation in several exhibitions outside of official galleries placed her outside the then-official culture. In the 1980s, she realized land art conceptual projects (temporary outdoor projects) only for friends, known is her Realization in Šárka. Her projects always emerged from active engagement with a specific place defined by architecture, urban environment, and landscape, often focusing on issues of power, political exploitation, and the obligation to remember.

Before emigrating, Jetelová left a project for underground gardening for Jižní Město in Prague. Her most famous project is Domestication of Pyramids, realized in several locations across Europe. From 1990 to 2004, she taught at the State Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, and since 2004, she has been at the academy in Munich. After the establishment of an independent Czech Republic, Jetelová served as a consultant for the Council of Prague Castle for three years. Already in 1993, her installation was officially exhibited in the Czech Republic at the Belvedere Summer Palace.