Daniel Pitin, The Old Swimming Baths, 2009
The Old Swimming Baths, 2009. Oil and acrylic on canvas. 65 x 90.6 inches.
Daniel Pitin
Czech, born 1977
The Old Swimming Baths, 2009
Daniel Pitín is one of the generation of artists to have emerged since the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. He received his education from the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, Czech Republic and continues to live and work in Prague.
Pitin produces large, visually complex paintings, dense with imagery and subtle references to films and canonical works of art. Often embedded are bits of newspaper, lace, paper towels and collaged segments od blueprints of buildings designed by his grandfather in Prague and left rolled up in his family attic. His dark color palette, solitary, ethereal figures, and surreal structures, which seem to both reveal and hide their occupants, imbue his works with moodiness and mystery. He describes his paintings as fragments of stories or dreams, explaining that through them he explores the “personal and public memory of the place where I live.” He uses the family archive and as well as internet sources, historic film material (specifically with references to the work of Alfred Hitchcock), film noir and Czech new wave films from the 1960s. His interest shifts between humanity and its creation, between structures and their content, filling his oeuvre with moodiness and a breath of unsaid contents.
Daniel Pitin was artist-in-residence at Hudson Valley MOCA Fall 2010, producing a solo exhibition ‘Garrison Landing’ that gained wide press acclaim.
Recent exhibitions include A Race of Peeping Toms, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2020, solo); A Paper Tower, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2019, solo); Broken Windows, House of Art, České Budejovice (2018, solo); Grotto, Charim Gallery, Vienna (2018, solo); Crystal Gardens, GRIMM, Amsterdam (2017, solo). Pitín is in the collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Knoxville Museum of Art. Solo institutional exhibitions include Cover Story, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (2012); Garrison Landing Hudson Valley MoCA (2010)`, Peekskill, NY and the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN (2011).