Milota Havránkova Foundation builds on the body of work of the renowned Slovak photographer Milota Havránková, who consistently and convincingly demonstrates her own uncompromising attitude to one’s inner artistic freedom through this medium.

The foundation supports artistic creation and curatorial and exhibition activities of the youngest generations and thus contributes to the understanding of this medium as a complex, dynamically evolving visual language communicating the fundamental questions of our being.

Milota Havrankova

Milota Havrankova (b. 1945) belongs to the first generation of professional photographers with a university education in Czechoslovakia who in the late 1960s graduated in art photography from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). Her work is characterised by a variety of technological and thought processes and a wide range of art disciplines, from design, through monumental and staged photography, to experimental film. Havránková entered the art scene in the late 1960s, when a young generation of photographers emerged (photographic „new wave“) who were not frightened to display a strong disrespect to the prevailing genres or formal traditions, or socially or politically engaged topics. Having crystallized outside the main photographic trends, her working method systematically demonstrates the fascination with a staged image and experimenting with incoherent and unconventional techniques. The artist´s timeless attitude to the issue of inner artistic freedom, even in the context of technological progress, is particularly inspiring. Havránková keeps transcending the boundaries of photography, film and video, anticipating the need to address the increasingly media-literate audience through several parallel languages. All these creative approaches can also be visible in her pedagogical works. In 2006 she was awarded the title of Professor of creative art, and for more than four decades, she has worked as a teacher at the best Czech and Slovak art schools, such as( the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Bratislava, Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica, and Art and Design Institute in Prague, where she considerably contributed to shaping key aspects of a parallel perception of photography and contemporary visual art. With the creative approach, she initiated the formation of the “Slovak New Wave” which was a group of young photographers who have influenced the postmodern line of Czechoslovak photography from the 1980s to the present. Havránková received several awards, such as the Crystal Wing Award in the category of fine art (2007), SEDF Professional Photographers Award – Personality of the Year (2014), or Tatra banka Foundation Art Award (2016).