Ladislav Vlna

 It is the metallurgical painting, as the artist calls his own technique of painting with fire on steel plates, that separates his work from conventional sculpture and painting practice. The extraction of colors from the interior of a steel plate onto its surface by flame and the subsequent shaping of their shades by annealing and engraving into the resulting figurative composition can hardly be called an ordinary painting. The whole creative process of such paintings is more akin to demanding sculptural work. The figural form of his sculptures and paintings thus becomes their content, too. The figure is their theme, their burning question and answer.

Text by Petr Vaňous