I make visual poetry
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Václav Alois Stratil was born on October 7, 1950, in Olomouc to the painter Vladimíra and grammar school teacher Václav Stratil. He has brothers Jiří, Jan and sister Ludmila. On graduation from the Grammar School of Jan Opletal in Litovel he studied at the Faculty of Arts, Palacky University Olomouc, where he specialised in pedagogics for adults. After graduation he worked as a methodist for amateur artists, art teacher, night guard and boiler operator. Since 1975 he exhibited his art in flats and studios in Olomouc and the surrounding area. In the early 1980 he was approached by the Secret Police who wanted to recruit him as an agent. When he was interrogated for the last time, he was beaten and left in a field. When employed as a night guard in the National Gallery in Prague in 1983, he already made large ink drawings. He made himself a name by an exhibition in the studio of M. Titlová in Prague in 1984, banned by the police after just a week. He had more exhibitions in culture centres and clubs. In the Olomouc gallery Pod podloubím, which opened on November 17, 1989, he saw the fall of socialism. Since then he has exhibited both in the Czech Republic and abroad. Alongside drawings he made photo-performances in community studios, an activity in which he has continued ever since. The Monastical Patient cycle is the most famous of them. From 1998 to 2015 he was the dead of the Department of Drawing and then the Department of Intermedia at the Faculty of Arts, VUT Brno, where he was appointed the associate professor. In 2003 he returned to painting and painted until 2016. Due to a controversy with fascist symbols on the Prima TV channel, his contract at the Faculty was not renewed. He lives and works in Brno. Besides sons Lojza and Štefan with his wife Jarmila he has a five-year-old son with his current wife Tereza.
