Milan Knížák (1940–2026) was a Czech artist, performer, musician and theorist, and one of the key figures of Fluxus and the unofficial art scene in communist Czechoslovakia. He founded the group AKTUAL, directed Fluxus East, served as rector of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts and director of the National Gallery in Prague; his work is in MoMA, Tate and the Centre Pompidou. His practice spanned happenings, street actions, noise music, design, poetry and photography.
Milan Knížák (1940–2026) was a Czech artist, performer, musician and theorist, born in Plzeň, and one of the key figures of Fluxus and of the unofficial art scene in communist Czechoslovakia. In the early 1960s he founded the group Actual Art, later known as AKTUAL, which staged some of the first happenings, street actions and noise-music concerts in Czechoslovakia. From 1965 he acted as director of Fluxus East, linking artists behind the Iron Curtain with the international Fluxus network. His work extended across visual art, music, architecture, design, fashion, poetry and photography, including the “Killing the Books” series of book-destroying works (1965–1970). Under the communist regime he was repeatedly harassed by the authorities, placed under police surveillance and arrested, among other occasions during an event with the underground band The Plastic People of the Universe. In 1968–1969 he lectured in the United States, and in the 1980s he taught in Hamburg and Salzburg. After 1989 he became professor of intermedia and, from 1990 to 1997, rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and from 1999 to 2011 he served as director of the National Gallery in Prague. His work is represented in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He died in July 2026 at the age of 86. The untitled collage (1986), offered by TUMO Gallery, is a colour screenprint on photographic paper with four safety pins, published in an edition of 100 by Edition Hundertmark in Cologne; this is number 14/100.
