Past Exhibitions:
2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001
2011 Exhibitions
Vladislav Mirvald
16. 9 - 27. 11. 2011
Vladislav Mirvald belongs to those artists that continuously invent something new. That did not mean that because of new discoveries they abandoned what they achieved in art had up until that point. Probably the most tempestuous decade for Vladislav Mirvald’s art – and for contemporary Czech and even the international art scene – was the nineteen sixties. At the beginning of the nineteen sixties Mirvald was a landscape artist, who, stemming from realistic and impressionistic painting, began to be interested in a more meaningful form of expression. At the end of the decade we find Mirvald as a constructor of paradoxical and optically playful pictures, which we can perceive as a fulfilling of experiments on the border of natural sciences and visual art.
Vladislav Mirvald’s work (1921 – 2003) is usually classed as so-called non-constructionist tendencies of Czech post-war art. The exhibition in Museum Kampa focused on the author’s work from the nineteen sixties, shows in a condensed form its playful non-linear development full of twists and turns. Strictly chronologically arranged works illustrate the author’s direction from landscape painting towards geometrical compositions. At the same time one can see in them, that Mirvald never walked away from an interest in landscapes or nature in general, it only had various forms. He abstracted the landscape into geometric forms and basic colours. Through blotch painting he tested coincidence and left Brownian’s chaotic motion, in order to create a work of art. He then systemized these coincidental compositions into geometric grids, as if they were scientific specimens. He was interested in script and Lettrism, he experimented with imprinting fabric on paper, and however, he did not stop painting realistic landscapes. Delineated geometric motifs appear in his work from the mid-nineteen sixties, which he quickly developed into several compositional series.
Vladislav Mirvald’s abundant work was created primarily to satisfy the artist‘s creative urge. This is why most of his works are on paper. Quite often he used smaller sheets of paper seldom measuring more than 30 x 42 cm. These measurements and utilized techniques allowed the author to do an exhaustive study of different approaches. The core of this exhibition is identically framed works which are displayed chronologically, which mutually permeate and show a complex network, which Vladislav Mirvald’s work creates.
Tomas Pospiszyl
Curator
Georg Baselitz - Volk Ding Zero
The sculpture Volk Ding Zero – Folk Thing Zero (2009) by Georg Baselitz (born January 23rd, 1938 as Hans-Georg Kern in Deutschbaselitz) is a three metre high bronze, which was cast in the spring of 2009 according to Mr. Baselitz’s painted sculpture made of cedar wood. Weighing around two and half tonnes this patinated bronze statue represents a man painted blue and white with oil paints sitting on a stool with classical ladies high heels on his feet. With his right hand touching his temple, this man has on his head a white hat which is in the shape of a paper hat, the type a person wears when trying to protect his or herself from drops of paint. The sculpture as a crude and expressive expression reminiscent of a rough drawing. Its head is a likeness of the artist, the first of its kind in bronze.
“Zero” is the name of the paints manufacturer, which specializes in varnishes and glazes. Hence, the title is in no way related to the well-known group of artists with the same name, which functioned from the late nineteen fifties until the beginning of the nineteen sixties. This confusion is a typical expression of Baselitz’s humour.
The seated position of the sculpture Volk Ding Zero – Folk Thing Zero (2009) with its hand on its temple refers to the Gothic motive of the Recumbent Christ with a slight difference, that the man is not looking down but looking forward into the distance. The left hand of this leaning seated figure rests lightly on his knee, the right touching his temple. This figural typus reflects “the solitary tolerance of the utmost possible pain”, formally oftentimes sketched with clumsy schematic limbs, where “in the forefront stands a physical fortitude” (Dr. Thomas Kellein, 2009). In the surroundings of the artist’s hometown Deutschbaselitz in Saxony near the Polish border stands in several places sculptural renderings of the Recumbent Christ. At the end of the 15th century in Germany, this motive was quite common and even today we find this theme in Polish folk art and in South-eastern Europe. Georg Baselitz for several years has been collecting African folk art, which inspires and fascinates him. In the statue Volk Ding Zero – Folk Thing Zero (2009), Baselitz overcomes the pathos in German folk art with its perspective of the portrayed figure in relation to the Earth. The seated statue with its taut position of the head looking forward, gains the totem like attribute of African figures, similar to the erect penis taken from African tribal art. This definitive separation of the traditional representation of the Recumbent Christ presents the grandeur of the sculpture and women’s shoes, for which the sitting man in his clumsy sturdiness presents certain brachial traits. Similar to the heroic paintings of the nineteen sixties Baselitz presents the life of a hardened person, whose suffering is undaunted and he himself has to start from zero and look forward – even if somewhat apathetically.
Jindřich Vik
5. 8. – 18. 9. 2011
A Man, who painted the Sea Jindřich Vik Female sculptor Jindra Viková, whom I know and am friends with for more than two decades, asked me sometime around 1996, if I’d like to take a look at what her deceased father Jindřich, a self-taught painter, had left behind. It was her, who had influenced him to start drawing and painting, so he could overcome the growing tiredness and boredom that came with his old age easier and feel the urge to live once again. I was interested, because for long I’ve been attracted to creative types from the outskirts of the art world, which had in many cases much deeper motivation than many of those enjoying their time in the spotlight. Once I went through Mr. Vik’s delicate creations my interest turned into excitement. What bound the aging man to the pencil, pen and brush was primarily the need to realize what his world is and who is he himself – he wasn’t after anything lesser than his own identity. He captured what was on his mind with an awkward and often naive but artistically impressive style and I really enjoyed his efforts to express himself regardless of having no artistic education or experience – he was untouched by professional conventions – inside, he was pure. And so I wrote a rather extensive paper on him titled The Man Who Paints the Sea, because the phenomena of seas and oceans fascinated Jindřich Vik – the more that he had never in his life actually seen or been near one. Thus he could produce only his own fixed vision of the sea in his paintings and longingly kept on doing so again and again – and always in the same exact way, had he placed it anywhere, even where it couldn‘t exist in reality. My article came out in the Revolver Revue magazine, after which he was brought to attention on television, a movie was shot about him, we held a couple of exhibitions of his works together with Jindra, an album and book containing reproductions of his works in color came out, interest in Vik’s work began rising even in foreign countries and The Man Painting the Sea became a term. Thanks to Museum Kampa the people and visitors of Prague can now get acquainted with these works of art, which is yet the biggest accomplishment of Vik’s postmortem career...
Jaromír Zemina
Jindřich Vik was born on June 4. 1899 in Jaroměř. After finishing the Business Academy of Hradec Králové he worked as a clerk at the Trade Bank of Prague. His personal hobbies were painting landscapes, mushroom hunting, math and geography – although he had never been abroad. He stopped painting as he grew old but once he reached the age of seventy he took up painting once again. The pictures of that period are considered to be his best. He died on March 3. 1980, as he had nothing more to paint.
Věra Janoušková - Intuition and Order
17. 6. – 9. 9. 2011
The opening of the Věra and Vladimír Janoušek Museum, which will take place in the fall of this year in the former atelier of both artists, is preceded by the exhibition of Věra Janoušková in Museum Kampa. On display is a remarkable ensemble of collages and asbestos and welded sculptures. Věra Janoušková is known more as a sculptor, but her collages, of which she created hundreds, are on the same level as her sculptures. The first collages were textiles, sewn from patches of material. Later she created collages using the more traditional material, paper. Similar themes that are used in her sculptures and objects appear in her collages. In a range of forms and variations the artist fashioned heads, figures and symbols, and sometimes she even leaned towards abstraction. She used various materials to create her collages (coloured and pierced papers, sections taken from poster billboards, motifs cut out from magazines, cuttings and translucent tissue paper). A majority of the collages are completed and enlivened with drawings in pencil, pen or marker. The Věra and Vladimír Foundation takes care of a fairly extensive collection, which is comprised of several hundred diverse collages and several sculptures from her early period up until works created just before the author’s passing.
Jiří Machalický, Curator of Museum Kampa
Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka, and Arnold Schönberg
12. 5. – 30. 8. 2011
Abstraction and Atonality
This exhibition features three very important individuals of the art world - Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka and Arnold Schönberg and will be the highlight of the year. Wassily Kandinsky and Arnold Schönberg are something very unique for Prague and to exhibit these artists together has an internal logic. The exhibition’s concept is based on the examination of the relationship between abstraction and atonality, whose principles are related. Indeed, patterns of music and visual compositions were to a large extent interlinked at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Museum Kampa houses one of the largest private collections of works by Frantisek Kupka with over 200 works stemming from his early years until his passing in 1957. This collection fully represents works from the time period when the artist moved into purely abstract expression, which had a very difficult evolvement in Frantisek Kupka. His development to this form of art was completely different to that of other pioneers of abstract art. Wassily Kandinsky matured to abstraction at the same time, but based on a very different thought processes. He was inspired by natural processes and their complicated transformations. Where Arnold Schönberg connected musical discoveries with artistic, even though the axis and the main contributor lies in music.
In addition, this exhibition is included in the Prague Spring Music Festival programme, and a concert focusing on this exhibition will be held in Museum Kampa on May 31, 2011. This cooperation with Prague Spring gives the exhibition a new dimension and will attract a lot of interest and a wide range of visitors.
The project emphasizes that it stems from the Munich concert of Schönberg’s composition in 1911, where Kandinsky was present. The exhibition shows how music inherently influenced the development of abstract painting, but of course there exists a retroaction. Also during this period, that is around 1910, the long process of mutual penetration of various artistic fields begins the erasure of boundaries between them, the convergence of principles on which they are based.
In this sense the exhibition focuses on one of these possible relationships and at the same time builds on the exhibition titled the Origins of Abstract Art, which took place several years ago in Paris. The public will thus have at the time of the Prague Spring a unique opportunity to see this remarkable exhibition, which will naturally merge with the substantially transformed permanent exhibition of Frantisek Kupka Museum Kampa. The exhibition catalogue will be published in Czech and English.
Jiří Machalický Curator for Museum Kampa – The Jan and Meda Mladek Foundation
The patronage for this exhibition has been assumed by:
RNDr. Petr Nečas, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic,
Mr. Karel Schwarzenberg, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs,
MUDr. Jiří Besser, Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic,
Doc. MUDr. Bohuslav Svoboda, CSc., Mayor of Prague,
Ing. Oldřich Lomecký, mayor of Prague 1 Municipal District,
H.E. Pierre Lévy Ambassador of France to the Czech Republic
and by H.E. Ferdinand Trauttmansdorff Ambassador of Austria to the Czech Republic.
Main partner:
Erste Stiftung
Partner:
Rakouské kulturní fórum
Zvláštní poděkovaní / Special thanks to:
Arnold Schonberg Centrum, Rakouské velvyslanectví, Francouzské velvyslanectví, Pražské jaro, Hl. město Praha, Praha 1, Ameropa, Uniqa
Special thanks:
Ameropa - International Music Festival and Chamber Music Courses
Media partner:
The Prague Post
Milan Grygar
6. 5. - 31. 7. 2011
Zdeněk Sýkora
February the 3rd 1920 in Louny, Czechoslovakia – 12th of July 2011 in Louny, Czech Republic
15. 7. - 3. 8. 2011
Zdeněk Sýkora is undoubtedly one of the most important Czech art personas of the last century’s latter half. He was also one of the internationally best recognized artists alongside Jiří Kolář, Karel Malich and Adriena Šimotová. His work is highly original. As he himself said – he was chiefly inspired by landscape, pursuing the contours and depths of the Czech central range from the windows of his Louny based studio. He had also come to structures based both on certain rules and accidents, which are the integral cornerstones of each and every system of order. Meda Mládková has followed Sýkora’s work since her first visit to Czechoslovakia after many years of exile. Aside from a set of graphic sheets she has acquired four important paintings, two of which have been chosen for the artist’s retrospective, held by the City Gallery Prague last year on the occasion of the painters ninetieth birthday. To honor the recently deceased artist, the Kampa Museum has prepared an intimate exhibition from its collection, focused primarily on graphic arts. Even these sets of silk-screens display the logic of the artist’s evolution – from the early structures of the sixties until the lines of his later period, which though are naturally based on the original structures. Jiří Machalický
PAVEL BRUNCLÍK: Czechs Portrait gallery
April 1 - June 12, 2011
The exhibition is a unique project of the photographer Pavel Brunclík. Presented will be photographic portraits of Czech personalities, who belong to the intellectual leaders of the nation. Amongst the portraits are scientists, writers, dramatists, actors, doctors, etc.
In addition to the countryside and the human form, Pavel Brunclík systematically engages in portrait photography. He chooses individuals from various fields (the arts, science, politics…). Pavel Brunclík is able to grasp their qualities and capture his subjects in characteristic poses. Sometimes the composition is carefully prepared and other times the author works with chance. He chooses a suitable environment, which is very close to the individual being photographed. The photographs are sometimes black and white and other times colour, but the important relationships of light is visible in them. Pavel Brunclík created more than fifty photographs, of which he chose the best based on content and technicality for the exhibition in Museum Kampa. Another criterion for the selection was the individual’s relationship to art and Museum Kampa.
Jiří Machalický
Curator
Adriena Šimotová, A Minor Glance Back 1975–91
February 25 - April 25, 2011
The exhibition has been extended until May 1, 2011
Allowance organisation of the City of Prague
Posters designed by Jan Schmid for Studio Ypsilon
Forty-five years of Studio Ypsilon and the exhibition of theatrical posters designed by Jan Schmid for Studio Ypsilon over the years
The celebration of the 45th anniversary of SY has been symbolically ended with an exhibition of theatrical posters created by the director and artist Jan Schmid. During the official opening, at which spoke J. Kroutvor and B. Nuska, a catalogue and exclusive calendar featuring twelve of Jan Schmid’s posters was Christened.
“A note to my exhibition in the former stables building of Sova’s Mills on Kampa. Because my posters are a part of the theatre, which we give life to, it can exist on its own, but primarily as an overlapping production from the viewpoint of the memory of the theatre, which performs always only today and at a specific time, or in something, that foreshadows the upcoming theatrical piece. This is why during the exhibition some of the members of the Ypsilon Theatre will perform live in the space, either sing, speak, act, or improvise. I am glad that this exhibition can have a random nature, be an occasional place of activity, in order for the presented picture to be a small part of the elemental integrity. To all of this I wish you bon appetit, good will and in the spirit of the theatre break a leg!”
Jan Schmid
Year’s jubilee of the 45th season of Studio Ypsilon is not only marked by various celebrations, but it also carries a return to the roots, a reminder of the Ypsilon’s beginnings in Liberec. This return to the source, to Ypsilon’s tradition, was ushered in with this year’s premiere of the play Amošt Goldflam’s “Babička se vrací” (Grandmother Returns) and Jan Schmid’s “TGM – Masaryk mezi minulostí a dneškem” (TGM – Masaryk between then and now). A celebratory evening was held on November 9th (during the evening all the current actors of the theatre appeared on stage and some of those that in the past helped in the artistic evolution of the theatre). This special evening was taped by ČT (Czech Television). During November various events were held as part of the anniversary celebrations – another year of the “Cute” festival, a non-traditional Ypsilon style “symposium” and a happening of the so-called young Ypsilon “Kačeři pod lampou” (Ducks under the Lamp).!
Partner of the anniversary celebrations of Studio Ypsilon is the company Optys Opava
