IRRLÆUFER

“Sedlec Cross” is a linocut print portraying the famous bone cross from the Sedlec Ossuary Chapel in Kutná Hora. In this chapel, a place of unique fascination and unease, human transience has been transformed into art—countless bones and skulls form elaborate ornaments, chandeliers, and altar elements. In this work, IRRLÆUFER focuses on one of the central structures of this macabre ensemble: the cross made of bones.

The artist translates the three-dimensional object into a powerful graphic representation. Through the reduction to black and white, the rigor of the lines, and the precision of the cuts, a reinterpretation of the original emerges, making the atmosphere of the place intensely palpable. The cross rises within a halo of bone fragments and skulls arranged in a ring around the center. The central skull, firmly at the heart of the composition, becomes the focal point of the print—a silent witness to life and its transience.

IRRLÆUFER eschews narrative embellishment, focusing instead on the formal and symbolic power of the motif. The sharp contrasts and the deliberate emptiness of the background draw the eye to the structure itself—the cross as a symbol of faith, sacrifice, and redemption, but also as an emblem of the inevitable end of every life.

“Sedlec Cross” is conceived as an homage to a real place, to a work of art created from the remains of the dead, thus unfolding a unique beauty. IRRLÆUFER‘s linocut is not a mere reproduction, but an artistic condensation—an attempt to capture the spiritual and emotional intensity of the original on the canvas.

The result is a work that exists between documentation and meditation: a graphic approach to a cross that has itself long since become a symbol—for the fragility of life and the persistence of human expression beyond death.

---