The era of simple opposites is coming to an end, claims Prague’s National Gallery. Her new permanent exhibition in the Trade Fair Palace focuses on Czech art from 1939 to 2021 and, in addition to top works, presents those from the hidden corners of the depository. Ones that the institution once bought more for ideological than artistic reasons and hardly ever exhibited.
The exhibition, entitled The End of the Black and White Era, which has been on view since last week, tries to be unconventional. It did more than that.
The quartet of curators Michal Novotný, Eva Skopalová, Adéla Janíčková and Adriana Šmejkalová built a fresh, communicative and emotional show mainly through a well-thought-out concept wrapped in layers of thought. Chronological ordering serves as a lifeline in the raging stream of diverse works of less than a century. The passage of time is punctuated by well-known works.
The custom-built architecture of the exhibition offers many vistas. Its authors, Dominik Lang and Jan Brož, largely used old panels, which they cut through in many places. There were not only portholes, but also openings for planting sculptures. Elsewhere, they knocked the panel to the ground, turning its smooth, flat side into a wavy surface. Planted with statues, it resembles a landscape with trees.
Signs with texts are pleasantly inconspicuous, they are found by those who are looking for information, and do not disturb those who came for emotions. These evoke particularly popular works: the sharp red painting of Cleopatra by Jan Zrzavý, the perfectly round, budding buds of the sculptor Hana Wichterlová, the Great Astronaut Pavel Brázda, the wire object of Karel Malich or less opulent, yet intensely affecting works. For example, black and white photographs of playful and life-threatening events from the seventies and eighties by Petr Štembera, Jiří Kovanda, Karel Miler or Zorka Ságlová.
The 1980s are represented by the works of František Skály, as well as a three-meter long, extremely laborious drawing with the inscription Stigma, which Václav Stratil created when he was a night watchman in National Gallery, and especially the paintings that the curators collectively describe as fantastic realism. There are canvases by Theodor Pištěk and, for example, Petra Oriešková.
In the photo from the exhibition, Hana Wichterlová’s sculptures are in the foreground. | Photo: Jakub Přecechtěl
Behind the last partition with a wide passage in the middle, which evokes the glory gate dedicated to the Velvet Revolution, are the youngest works. Larger-than-life self-portraits by Milena Dopitová, videos by Martin Kohout, Mark Thero and Anna Daučíková, social projects by Kateřina Šedá and Eva Koťátková.
The exhibition draws exclusively from the largest Czech art collection, the National Gallery did not have to borrow any works. She describes it as a pioneering act, although it might seem that it is more a virtue of an underfunded institution.
However, the absence of loans really does not matter. The collection of the National Gallery, numbering over ten thousand items, is rich enough. And most importantly: the curators chose the very history of the institution as one of the main motifs of the exhibition, more precisely the art it purchased for the collection between 1939 and 2021.
The fifties were the richest in contrasts and opposites of artistic positions. The selected examples illustrate ideologically motivated purchases of works of socialist realism, incidentally also by Chinese painters.
For comparison, figurative works by the French painter and sculptor Fernand Léger, who lived in Paris at the time František Kupka, as well as a painting by Pavel Brázda, who was not allowed to exhibit for most of his life, are placed near the paintings full of sharply cut faces of determined workers.
The picture from the exhibition shows the painting Big Astronaut by Pavel Brázda, 1954. | Photo: Jakub Přecechtěl
Brázd’s Great Astronaut, which also became the visual logo of the new exhibition, did not enter the collection of the National Gallery until after 1989. Similar to dozens of other works now on display, which were officially unacceptable at the time of their creation and only democratic conditions enabled their influx into the state collection.
It is actually a great privilege to view works that could not be found in one place before. Curator Adéla Janíčková categorizes it from authors “to whom history happens” and others “who create it”.
According to her, it is interesting to observe the contrast and transformation in the “career” of individuals who left the category of authors dragged along by history by emigrating. He cites the designer Ladislav Sutnar or the painter Toyen as examples. Both belong to the minority of authors who are represented by more than one work in the exhibition of over 300 works.
In addition to the 1950s, the 1970s and 1980s brought the most contrasts and definitions. “We show here even worse things than socialist realism,” notes Michal Novotný, curator and head of the National Gallery’s Collection of Contemporary and Modern Art. He pauses at the colorful paintings, which are said to be a typical “waiting room” production of the sixties. “That kind of Chagallian expression was extremely popular,” he says, referring to an extended style imitating the famous painter Marc Chagall.
In order to avoid the mistake that such works are exhibited here mainly for informational and documentation purposes, they belong to a secondary, rather hidden part of the exhibition. And their installation is deliberately more reminiscent of placement in a depository.
In the photo from the exhibition, on the left is the painting Car by the leading contemporary Czech painter Josef Bolf. | Photo: CTK
Purchases for the collection of the National Gallery during totalitarianism did not just copy official strategies, they also reflected the opposite tendencies. For example, a large influx of new works into the collection occurred at the end of the 1960s, when it became clear that the social and cultural revival was coming to an end following the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. People from the management of the institution “knew that it was art that could not be bought later”, says curator Janíčková.
The exhibitions from 1968 to 1971, which resemble posters in the exhibition, must have acted as a lingering breath of freedom. In 1968, the National Gallery managed to organize a retrospective of the renowned artist Yves Klein, a year later Paul Klee and in 1971 also Bridget Riley, as well as a show called American Painting for 1945. Another, already normalized dramaturgy is evidenced by the poster for the 1975 exhibition called Woman , family, child.
An archival image from the National Gallery exhibition in September 1969 shows the Abduction of the Sabines by Pablo Picasso. | Photo: CTK
The paradoxes of the turning point are also illustrated by the small painting Abduction of the Sabines by Pablo Picasso. The famous artist created it in 1962, it entered the collection of the National Gallery six years later as a gift from an unknown collector who wanted to pay tribute to the Prague Spring, which was still ongoing at the time, that is, to the cultural and social upheaval in Czechoslovakia.
The well-known Parisian gallerist Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler acted as an intermediary for the donation, and the curators believe that he is also the donor of Picasso’s work. However, before the donation formalities were settled, the occupying troops arrived. The painting celebrating freedom did not travel to the National Gallery until after the invasion, which ended the Prague Spring.
The new exposition in the Trade Fair Palace offers countless such stories, which is a good way to approach art. It accompanies part of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century with insight and a clear opinion. It complements older exhibitions called 1790 – 1918: Art of the Long Century and 1918 – 1938: The First Republic. The exhibition of modern Czech art is thus complete and attractive perhaps even on a European scale.
