Miroslav Tichý

MIROSLAV TICHY was born in a small village in Moravia in 1926. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1945 to 1948, he became an avant-garde artist who produced drawings and paintings, and from the 1960s through the 1980s focused on photography. A recluse and social outcast, Tichy was known only to a few until 2004 when he was included in the International Seville Biennial. In 2005, he won the Discovery Award at Photography Aries in France and a major retrospective and catalogue was produced by the Kunsthaus Zurich in Switzerland. Since then, he has had solo exhibitions in several commercial art galleries and at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands and group exhibitions such as Soleil Noir: Depression and Society at Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg. His photography is the inspiration for an ongoing travelling exhibition entitled Artists for Tichy - Tichy for Artists. He is the subject of several publications, articles and a documentary film, and his photographs are in public collections such as the Centre Pompidou and the Victoria and Albert Museum.