In honor of Jiří Hilmar

Jiří Hilmar was born in Hradec Králové. From 1952 to 1956, he studied at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Prague under Prof. Richard Pípal. In 1969, he left Czechoslovakia for political reasons and moved to Germany. He lived there, with some interruptions, until 2013. In the same year, he was granted honorary citizenship of the city of Hradec Králové and returned permanently to the Czech Republic.

After studying at UMPRUM, he devoted himself primarily to commercial art. Most of the book covers and movie posters for a total of 55 films, which he created from 1959 to 1968, date from this period. For his poster work, Jiří Hilmar received an Honorable Mention for his collection of film posters and an award at the International Film Poster Exhibition in Karlovy Vary in 1962.

Hilmar was also, along with Tomáš Rajlich, Radoslav Kratina, Miroslav Vystrčil, and theorist Arsén Pohribný, a founding member of the Club of Concretists, which was established in 1967. After emigrating, Hilmar began to devote himself to free artistic creation. He entered the art scene with his optical reliefs, which were part of the wave of so-called ritual-kinetic optical structures. In Germany, he went through a period of so-called anti-civilization actions, which signified a return to nature and were closely related to the process art and Arte Povera movements of the time. Jiří Hilmar’s work is represented in many galleries abroad as well as in the Czech Republic.

At this exhibition, you can see a selection of nine movie posters, which were loaned to us for this purpose by the film boutique Terry’s Socks.
https://www.terryhoponozky.cz/