Karel Malich was born on 18 October 1924 in Holice, Czechoslovakia, where he studied art education and aesthetics at the Charles University Faculty of Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His inaugural solo exhibition took place in 1963 at the House of Culture in Vysoké Mýto. That same year, he co-founded the prestigious art group Křižovatka/Crossroads, along with other notable members such as Jiří Kolář, Běla Kolářová, Zdeněk Sýkora, and Otakar Slavík. In the second half of the 1960s, Malich’s works started to gain recognition abroad, with his Black and White Sculpture being selected for exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1967. In 1970, Malich’s works were displayed alongside those of other Czech artists at the Venice Biennale, and he also created the bronze signing table and a model of the Earth for Expo ’70 in Osaka. In 1979 to 1980, he wrote his poetic prose titled “From That Time to That Time Now,” which was later recorded by Jiří Lábus for a CD released in conjunction with the retrospective Malich exhibition held at the Prague Castle Riding School in 2013. The exhibition showcased three hundred pieces of Malich’s art, spanning fifty years of his illustrious career.
www.ftn-books.com has now the extremely scarce Badhuis publication from 1982 available.
