Stanislav Diviš * 1953 Shards of Memory, 2008

Stanislav Diviš came to his artistic career indirectly, thanks to his fascination with the paintings of the pioneer of abstract art, František Kupka. Consequently, Diviš was slightly older than his classmates when he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU) in 1982. Shortly thereafter, he initiated regular pre-Christmas gatherings featuring presentations of works from all the school's studios. These foreshadowed the unofficial Konfrontace (Confrontations) exhibitions, which he organized with Jiří David starting in 1984 as a platform for the free presentation of current works by young and emerging artists.

It was here that the emerging generation of artists, inspired by Neo-Expressionist European painting and Italian Transavanguardia, was formed, which later led to a postmodern artistic view and the founding of the group Tvrdohlaví (The Stubborn Ones) in 1987. Diviš became a founding member of this group, along with Jiří David. Other members included Michal Gabriel, Zdeněk Lhotský, Stefan Milkov, Petr Nikl, Jaroslav Róna, František Skála, Čestmír Suška, and Václav Marhoul.

Diviš's painting evolved from the mid-1980s in extensive cycles, to which he returned years later in new artistic series. The foundation of his artistic expression is the abstraction of a real record, often resulting in a completely abstract work that the author himself calls the method of "scientific realism." Here, Diviš proceeds by exact comparison to the shift and reduction of the seen into a geometrized sign, in which painterly and graphic forms of expression intermingle. Early in his career, influenced by the Neo-Expressionist wave, he created the series Kašpaři (Clowns/Fools) (1984–85), followed by a cycle of sacred themes. In 1990, Diviš painted the well-known series titled Spartakiády (Spartakiads).

From the mid-1990s, he created arguably his most abstract cycle, titled Zbytky (Remnants), whose subject is fabric swatches from the now-defunct textile factory in Aš in West Bohemia. Diviš shifts the initial motifs—colored geometric segments—into abstract color fields that evoke certain memories and associations related to their original shapes and color models. The interplay of the composability of individual elements and their variations is the basis for constructing a pictorial system, and simultaneously a deconstruction of the source motif. The source, however, is not a perceived reality but an already abstracted textile design by another creator, bearing the distinctive period aesthetic associated with the post-war wave of organic abstraction known today as the Brussels Style. The series was presented under the title Střepy paměti a Zbytky (Shards of Memory and Remnants) at an exhibition in the Gallery ad astra at Kuřim Castle in 2008.

Stanislav Diviš became a co-founding member of the group Tvrdohlaví in 1987. Since that year, he has regularly exhibited in group and solo exhibitions.