ADÉLA DUCHÁČOVÁ
b. 1882 Železný Brod, Czech Lands, Austro-Hungarian Empire
d. 1952 Železný Brod, Czech Republic
WORKS | BIOGRAPHY | EXHIBITIONS | PUBLICATIONS
SELECTED WORKS
BIOGRAPHY
Adéla (Adda) Ducháčová was born in a poor family in a small northern Bohemian town. After the death of her mother, she cared for the large family. At nineteen she married the factory worker František Ducháč who was strongly involved with the local spiritualist groups. They lived with six children in a one-room flat in the colony of a textile factory. From their window they could see a well-groomed flower garden with tree roses and miniature houses.
Adéla Ducháčová soon developed into a writing and a drawing medium. For people consulting her, Ducháčová wrote inspired texts purportedly containing in concentrated form the symbols of their personality. She claimed to have inherited this faculty and knowledge about this method from her mother Anna Němečková, who also worked as a writing medium. After the passing of her husband in 1938, she earned a living by making dolls with sewn clothes.
Adéla Ducháčová became something of a local celebrity through her colorful mediumistic drawings on large-format papers. At times she also used silk as a basis. Her drawings consist mostly of imaginatively elaborated radiant plant motifs with a idiosyncratic ornamental quality. There are aesthetic influences of Art Nouveau as well as of other mediumistic artists in the region of the Giant Mountains, where mediumistic drawing was widespread in the spiritualist milieu. On her drawings, Ducháčová she wrote down, which one of her diverse spirit guides was responsible for the work.
EXHIBITIONS
2019 Plants of the Soul: Floral Fantasies between Symbolism and Outsider Art. Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany, 3/31/2019 – 8/4/2019
2016 Květy a jiné světy (Flowers and Other Worlds), Olomouc Museum Of Art, Czech Republic, 4/28/2016 – 9/25/2016
A flower by Adéla Ducháčová from CoMA together with a surrealist collective drawing at the exhibition Plants of the Soul: Floral Fantasies between Symbolism and Outsider Art. Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany, 3/31/2019 – 8/4/2019
Photo © Elmar R. Gruber
PUBLICATIONS
Šimková, Anežka: Květy a jiné světy. Olomouc: Muzeum umění Olomouc, 2016.
O Kresbach medijních. Posel záhrobní, XXVII, 1927.
