Mediumistic Drawing in Silesia – Jan Oravec and Eva Zdrazilova
Mediumistic Drawing in Silesia by Jan Oravec and Eva Zdražilová / text in Czech and English / 344-page hardback, 9.5 x 12 inches, published in 2024
An incredible publication, for fans of Anna Zemánková especially.
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An important collection of Mediumistic drawings from Silesia seen together for the first time and unknown to the wider public.
“Mediumistic Art” describes it:
“With texts by Vivienne Roberts and Martin Jemelka in Czech and English the book is introduced by a seminal text on mediumistic art in a global context and on the activity of the Brotherhood association (1914–1951) in Radvanice, which for a long time became the basis of the development of the spiritualist movement in Silesia. Their work included a wide range of activities from a choir, through important publishing activities, to the organization of exhibitions of spiritualist drawings. The onset of the communist dictatorship meant not only the end of the association, but also years of repression, and the majority of faithful spiritualists hid in internal emigration. What was built for years was destroyed, scattered, often irretrievably. Fortunately, some of the artworks were hidden in the families of courageous spiritualists.
“After many years of effort, a large body of archival materials and over 250 drawings have been rediscovered and are presented in this publication for the first time. Mediumistic drawing is elusive, nourished by the psychic world of spiritism. The hands of the drawing mediums are not guided by their consciousness, but by the vast world of the dead, which exceeds the possibilities of human knowledge. A number of important representatives of global modern art have claimed it as a source of inspiration, who rightly considered mediumistic drawings to be a miracle that defies any classification. The book is a major contribution to the history of world culture.”
