changing under authoritarian political influence, the generations before us experienced the Second World War with cruel behavior and genocide. Similar situations have been happening recently in the United States.”
Until recently few Americans have witnessed what it means to lose freedom. There is little difference between Milan Heger painting in the equivalent of a garbage can and small children being herded into metal cages at the Mexican border. The loss of freedom is one and the same.
All of Milan Heger’s design mediums can be placed on an important creative tableau. Financially and creatively, they feed his dreams to make art. Heger instinctively knows how to make something out of nothing. As a boy his grandfather, the one who taught him to paint, told him, “Never throw anything away. You’ll never know when it will come in handy.” But to tell the real story of his life, it is essential to focus only on his art. Returning to the notion of painting in a cold outhouse in the woods, Milan Heger was deeply affected by the fact that that he wasn’t allowed to freely express his ideas in art. He had to create art in secret, to avoid being discovered. He learned art cannot be shackled.
Milan Heger’s works are fresh stories bursting at the seams. The stories in his art are composed as if one were to conduct a symphony full of underlying instruments striking the tones of freedom, sometimes jubilant, sometimes discordant—freedom of expression or the lack of that freedom, and with freedom comes the crescendo of social issues, racial and gender equality, and a filial chorale of what it means for humans to be freed generation after generation. His use of color is connected to the essence and energy of color, and is what people respond to on a deep subliminal level the same way synesthetes see color when they hear music.
Milan Heger speaks seven languages fairly fluently, but his art is his eighth and most satisfying language, the universal language. He says, “Each piece is almost an artifact, laying witness to an event in my understanding of the universe.”
Milan Heger’s works have been exhibited extensively in hundreds of solo and group invitational exhibitions worldwide. His paintings and mixed media works have received many awards and are in public and private collections in the United States, France, Canada, Russia, London and Japan. In Seattle he is represented by Patricia Cameron and Ryan James Fine Arts.