Miloš Šejn

• Name — Miloš Šejn • Born — 10 August 1947 • Birthplace — Jablonec nad Nisou, Czechoslovakia • Education — Charles University • Known for — performance, land art, environmental art, drawing • Movement — Conceptual art, Process art, Intermedia, Performance art • Website — http: www.sejn.cz

Šejn was born in Jablonec nad Nisou and has lived in Jičín since childhood. His early interest in natural science, including collecting minerals and observing plants and animals, became a formative influence on his artistic practice. Between 1962 and 1966, he studied at the Secondary School of Applied Arts, specializing in gem cutting and engraving. From 1970 he studied art history and aesthetics at Charles University, later also studying art education. From the mid-1970s he worked as a curator at a regional gallery in Hradec Králové. After 1989 he joined the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he led the Studio of Conceptual and later Intermedia Art until 2011.

Šejn's early work includes the series Awake Dreaming (1967–1969), based on brief physical contact between the body and natural materials. These actions introduced key elements of his later practice, including processuality, embodied experience, and site-specific engagement. In the 1970s and 1980s he developed work using natural pigments, imprints, and drawing in landscape settings, alongside photography and experimental film. He also produced abstract landscape paintings, such as the cycle Ravine (1978–1981). From the mid-1980s his work shifted toward process-based forms grounded in direct interaction between body and environment. During this period he developed a long-term line of processual images, combining drawing, gesture, time, and natural materials. These works function as records of physical presence in the landscape and remain a continuous aspect of his practice. Drawing plays a central role in his work as a tool for perception and recording, often combined with text, collected materials, photography, film, and bodily action. These elements form complex structures linking place, time, and embodied experience. After 1989 he expanded his practice to include public performances and multimedia projects. In this period he also entered into dialogue with the international environmental art scene, including connections with The Harrison Studio, whose work similarly explores relationships between art and landscape. In 1991 he presented work at the Milano Poesia festival. In the 1990s he created projects combining image, body, sound, and space, including work at the Plasy Monastery in 1994. Between 2008 and 2014 he realized Solar Mountain, a large-scale land art project integrating landscape intervention, architecture, water, light, and sound.

• Illustration — Miloš Šejn, Solar Mountain, 2014, earthwork, Horka u Olomouce, Czech Republic • Illustration — Miloš Šejn, Green Man, 2003, performance • Illustration — Miloš Šejn, Big Skin, 1995, installation (natural pigments, sound), ifa Galerie, Berlin, Germany • Awake Dreaming (1967–1969) • Ravine (1978–1981) • Demarcation of Space by Fire (1982) • Falling Sun (1983) • Processual pigment works and installations (from the mid-1980s) • Colorum Naturae Varietas (1999) • St. Anne I–II (2000–2003) • Green Man (2003–2004) • Solar Mountain (2008–2014)