Stano Filko: A Retrospective

On the visionary oeuvre of a protagonist of Eastern Europe's 1960s avant-garde

An influential figure in the Slovakian avant-garde, Stano Filko (1937-2015) synthesized Pop art, Fluxus and Conceptual art into a universalist vision of art and life influenced by subjects such as modernist architecture, mathematical algorithms and the cosmos. He designed hybrid objects and environments, assemblages, text-based works and performances that attempted to circumvent state repression. Among his acclaimed bodies of work are the Altar assemblages of the mid-1960s and the Bomb series. Having fled to West Germany in 1981, Filko exhibited at Documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982, and then relocated to New York, where he took up neo-expressionist painting, embracing a rainbow-colored chakra system that he explored for the rest of his life.
This first English-language publication on Filko approaches his multilayered oeuvre from various perspectives.