We wanted to go a different way
Stanislav Diviš was born on 20 November 1953 in Kutná Hora. His mother was an accountant and his father worked as an electrician in surface mines in Chvaletice. They lived in Telčice, which became famous for its cultural house in late 1950s. During the fading golden era of Czechoslovak big beat, bands such as Blue Effect, Flamengo or Synkopy 61 performed there. This inspired Stanislav to open a boys‘ club in an empty laundry room downstairs. Before devoting himself fully to the visual arts, he trained as an electrician and then moved to Kutná Hora to study technical college. At that time, his interest in art started to deepen, also thanks to a biographical book of František Kupka. He tried to get to art schools in Prague (Academy of Fine Arts, Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design) seven times. During that time, he went through various professions - from operating a truck for collecting faeces through picture framing to picking strawberries to the position of artist of the district cultural centre. Among other things, he organized concerts of singers such as Vladimír Merta or Pepa Nos. This caught the attention of the Secret police (StB), who kept a file of his activities with the code name Artist. On the seventh attempt, he succeeded to get to the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU). But he was later expelled from the academy, allegedly because of his eccentric performance with the band Krásné nové stroje. Together with a classmate from the Academy of Fine Arts Jiří David, they organized ‚Confrontations‘ in the 1980s, followed by the creation of an important art group Tvrdohlaví in 1987. During the Velvet Revolution he helped with activities around the Mánes Gallery. After 1989, Stanislav Diviš became an established painter of Czech postmodernism. In 1996 he worked for a year as a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU) and in 2003–2010 he worked as the head of the painting studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. To this day, he is the frontman of the band Krásné nové stroje.