Jan Merta (painter)
Born on the 4th of December 1952 in Šumperk, Czech Republic
His father was an evangelical pastor in Valteřice. Mother came from a family of repatriated Polish exiles. She has two older siblings. In 1953, the family moved to the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren to Liberec, where after some time was deprived of the so-called state permission to exercise clerical activity, because the local evangelical congregation appeared to the state authorities as too active. His father then worked in the collection of raw materials, his mother in the Jedlička Institute. His father was Jan’s first teacher of realistic painting, and later Jan attended the Public School of Art.
1960s
In 1966, at the time of the beginning of the political liberation, the family moves to the industrial city of Ústí nad Labem, where the father is allowed to practice the profession of a parish priest. In Ústí, Jan again attends the Folk School of Art, where he meets the painter Jan Daniel Smetana, who introduces his pupils to modern art (Kubišta, Zrzavý, Gogh…).
In 1968 Jan travels with his teacher Smetana to Vienna, where he visits the Kunsthistorisches Museum and gets to know the originals of the old masters (Titian, Bruegel, Rembrandt…). In the spring of 1968, Jan’s “cadre profile” does not prevent his admission to the Secondary Vocational School of Art in Prague (the so-called Hollarka). In August 1968, he experienced the invasion of the Warsaw Pact occupation armies into the Ústí region and in the atmosphere of strikes and revolts against the Soviet occupation, he went to study in Prague.
1970s
In 1972 he visits public School of Art Leningrad and Hermitage in Ustí nad Labem. After graduation in 1972, he applies to the Academy of Fine Arts, but is not accepted. He stays in Prague and works in various non-artistic professions.
In the spring of 1973 he takes the exams again at the Faculty of Education in Ústí nad Labem, but as a child from a religious family, he has no hope of being accepted during the time of the normalisation. He again pursued various non-artistic jobs.
In the period 1974-1978 he is married for the first time.
Since 1975 he has been working for OPBH (District enterprise of housing management) as an operating technician, which enabled him to get a caretaker’s flat and earn a living as a house cleaner while studying.
He only paints on weekends.
1980s
In 1980, with the help of an acquaintance, he joins the Union of Czech Photographers, and this enables him to acquire a dark and damp non-residential space in Petrská Street, which he converts into his own studio.
In 1981, he attends a course in figure drawing at the LŠU in Žižkov under Vratislav Plaček and applies again to the Academy of Fine Arts, this time he is accepted, his classmates in the painting studio of professor Oldřich Oplt are mostly a several years younger. During his studies, thanks to his classmates, he becomes acquainted with the Czech unofficial art scene (Čestmír Kafka, Stanislav Kolíbal, Václav Boštík, Zdeněk Palcr, Adriena Šimotová and others) and thanks to the support of the librarian Mr. Krob, he learns about contemporary world art from “banned” magazines and books.
Between 1984 and 1987, he participated in four unofficial (unauthorized) exhibitions of contemporary young artists – mostly (but not only) students of art schools. In his fifth year (1986), he tried to graduate, but his works were not allowed to be admitted; there was no one willing to take on the opposition, because his works on the theme of “Feast” were too different from what the school required at the time. In the same year, he sold his first painting and met the husband and wife team of Jana and Jiří Ševčík.
In 1987 – he graduates, the supervisor of his diploma thesis on the topic “Man and Music” after the retirement of Professor Oplt is Associate Professor Jiří Ptáček. Professor Oplt willingly took over the opposition and prevented the dismissal proposed by the then Vice-Rector Professor Václav Pospíšil. The diploma thesis was finally evaluated with the grade “excellent”. In the summer of 1987, he married Lenka Cejpa, who gradually became his assistant, collaborator, co-curator, co-author of texts and strict critic.
After graduation, he teaches drawing in an adult course for a few months and earns money from restorations, but later he makes his living only as a freelance artist.
In 1988 his son Tomáš was born.
In January 1988 he participates in Palach Week. He becomes involved in the so-called “Youth Activity”, which attempts to politically define itself against the practices of the then Union of Czechoslovak Artists and the official art scene. In the summer he works in Libkov in Železné Hory, where he stays with his wife’s family.
His son Jonatan was born in 1989.
In the autumn of 1989 he takes part in the demonstrations and after the artists occupied the galleries, he works at the Young Gallery at Řečický and later at the Václav Špála Gallery. He becomes a member of the OF. He celebrates New Year’s Eve 1989 in Lucerna and then returns to his art work, leaving politics to the professionals. Both he and his wife work as freelancers, a rather adventurous affair at first under socialism and then during the “restoration of capitalism in Bohemia”, and dealing with the authorities is often nerve-wracking.
1990s
In the spring of 1990, he travels behind the Iron Curtain for the second time in his life to capitalist West Germany and Amsterdam. In the summer of 1990 he visits the United States as part of the Dialogue project in Los Angeles / Prague. He begins working with one of the first private gallerists, Tomáš Procházka.
In 1991-2002 he is represented by the MXM Gallery in Prague, which is run by Jan Černý after the death of the Procházkas. In 2002, floods brought the gallery to an end.
In 1991 – it rents a classroom in an empty school in Libkov as a summer studio. Sometime around this time he finally gets rid of his housekeeping and cleaning duties.
In 1992 he spent half a year on a scholarship from the BINZ 39 Foundation in Scuol, Switzerland.
In 1994-95 he worked in Prague and in a former inn hall in Hodonín near Nasavrky. In order to have a permanent space for his studio, in 1995 he bought a house in České Lhotice. He embarks on extensive repairs to the house and landscaping of the garden and moves his paintings to the site in the same year.
In the summer of 1998, due to privatisation, he had to leave his studio in Prague’s Petrská Street, saying goodbye to it with a “family exhibition” and moving for one year to the studio at the Centre for Contemporary Art Prague in Jelení Street.
Since 1999 he has been working for 11 years in a studio in the premises of a kindergarten in Hlubočepy, which was lent to him by Martin Mainer.
2000 – present
In 2003, he met the German gallerists Jörg Johnen and Rüdiger Schöttle and from that year onwards, he cooperated with the Johnen+Schöttle Gallery in Cologne (later Galerie Johnen in Berlin until 2015, when the gallery closed its doors, and since 2004 with the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery in Munich, as well as with the Austrian Martin Janda Gallery in Vienna. Sometime around this time, he met the gallerist Zdeněk Sklenář and over the course of several years, the cooperation with his gallery gradually developed.
In the winter semester 2009/2010, he worked as a guest teacher at the Šaloun Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts.
In 2010, he moved his Prague studio again, this time to the building of the former electrical enterprises in Prague 7 (ORCO), and in July 2012 to Radlická Street in Smíchov, where he has been working ever since.
In 2013, he began a collaboration with the gallerist Michal Mánek and his SVIT Gallery, which lasted until 2022, when the gallery ceased operations.
In 2005 and again in 2009 he received the annual award of Pars pro toto magazine – Personality of the Year for his artistic achievement.
He has been a member of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award committee several times.
Since 2020 he has been a member of the Czech Academy of Visual Arts (ČAVU).
In 2024, Tomáš Merta’s documentary film ECHT – about the painter Jan Merta was produced by Galerie Zdeněk Sklenář and Czech Television.
