Past, Present and Future
The art collection owned by the Czech Museum of Fine Arts, formerly the Central Bohemian Gallery, began to be formed even earlier than the institution itself was founded. The collection came into being at the Central Bohemian Region Centre of Heritage Conservation and Nature Preservation. The first results of its acquisition activity were presented to the public in 1963 at Nelahozeves Castle. From 1965 a permanent exhibition was established at Nelahozeves that was gradually altered. This exhibition, very modern for its time, presented viewers with a unique collection of paintings and sculptures that the gallery’s founders, Miloš Suchomel (at the gallery in 1964) and Jiří Kohoutek (at the gallery 1964-1971) in particular, managed to acquire in a very short space of time. In 1971, as part of the system of hard-line repression that came in the wake of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, the permanent exhibition was closed. In 1982 and 1984, part of the collection was exhibited in a limited form emphasising the realist tradition together with a collection of 19th-century Czech art at the former Bohemian Brethren chapel in Mladá Boleslav. In 1984 part of the collection was opened to the public in the ‘small castle’ of Průhonice near Prague. Since then, the collection has never been presented in the form of a long-term or permanent exhibition. This means that the Czech Museum of Fine Arts will be opening its collection of 20th-century art in its entirety for the first time in more than thirty years. This exhibition will finally present the entire range of acquisitions made by the museum from the time of its founding up to the present day, thus following on from the first exhibition of 20th-century art installed during the 1960s at Nelahozeves Castle. The lack of space for an overall view of the museum’s collection has, in the intervening period, been partly resolved by projects of varying scopes and a series of collection-oriented exhibitions, whether at its ‘home base’ in Husova Street, at what are now its former venues at the House of the Black Madonna and Carolinum, and also at Czech regional galleries and institutions in other countries.
The series of works acquired in the early 1960s represents the basis of the museum’s collection of 20th-century Czech art. Thanks to the favourable social climate of that time, its founders and first collectors succeeded in creating one of the finest collections in this country. Their acquisition work, which sought to reflect the development of art in a structured form as well as in period contexts, focused at that time on the period of classical pre-war Modernism of the 1920s and ’30s, art of the wartime era, the emergence of new art groups during the late 1950s and the latest art trends of the 1960s.
The dynamic period of building up the collection was brought to an abrupt end by the adverse change in Czechoslovakia’s regime, and with it a change in the gallery’s administration. The continuity of the acquisition programme was permanently broken. During the 1970s and ’80s, the gallery’s acquisition programme chiefly focused on forms of artistic traditionalism. The collection was enhanced with several high-quality acquisitions of 19th-century art as well as art from the turn of the 20th century. Other acquisitions included examples of realist expression though also ideologically tendential forms and art that was merely acceptable to the regime of the day. The acquisition of modern art stagnated, however.
This task was taken on once again by the new post-1989 gallery administration under directors Jan Sekera (1991-2000) and Ivan Neumann (2000-), whose chief aims included following on from the tradition of its 1960s predecessors and trying to continue their original aim of creating a comprehensive but also inwardly structured picture of the development of 20th-century Czech art while conscious of the limited opportunities to acquire works from the 1970s and ’80s, many of which are now unavailable to collectors.
Today’s curatorial team continues to develop the tradition of its predecessors in the field of contemporary art as well, trying to identify and select works whose values will also be capable of addressing the public in the future. Respecting the legacy of the museum’s founders, the current curators are working towards developing a collection that provides a pluralist image of the Czech art, one that respects its particular qualities and characteristics. Despite its incomplete character, the collection of art from the turn of the 20th century goes at least some way to outlining the complex situation on the art scene at a time when the foundations were being laid for Czech modern art as an independent sphere of spiritual life in a society that was gradually emancipating itself.
The collection includes works that still represent late neo-romanticism with its fairytale atmosphere as well as works of an Art Nouveau and Symbolist orientation. The finest examples in this set of works include paintings and sculptures by leading figures of the late 19th and early 20th century: Vojtěch Hynais, Jakub Schikaneder, Jan Preisler, Ladislav Šaloun, Stanislav Sucharda, Josef Mařatka, Antonín Slavíček and Antonín Hudeček, as well as series of prints by Vojtěch Preissig and František Kupka. The museum also owns a series of works by painters from the school of Julius Mařák.
The strong emergence by the subsequent Czech Modernist generation during the 1900s and the 1910s is illustrated by a few examples of work from the circle of The Eight group, primarily a small but high-quality collection of Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures by Josef Čapek, Antonín Procházka, Otto Gutfreund, Emil Filla and Václav Špála.
The pride of the museum’s collection is a series of works of Czech art dating from the period prior to, and during, the Second World War that, thanks to its comprehensive and diverse character, successfully documents the artistic development of that time. The pluralist art scene of the 1920s is represented in the museum’s collection by the urban-based Social Group (Miloslav Holý, Karel Holan and Pravoslav Kotík) and artists belonging to the ‘countryside section’ of the Umělecká beseda arts association (Václav Rabas, Vlastimil Rada and Karel Boháček). The works of Jan Zrzavý, Otakar Kubín, Alfréd Justitz and Jiří Kars of this period are connected with the trend of neoclassicism. Josef Hubáček, Jan Slavíček and other artists associated with Otakar Nejedlý’s landscape painting school manifested a bond with French artistic models. Apart from figuratively oriented work, the museum’s collection also features several examples of avant-garde abstraction. These include three paintings by František Foltýn. The pictures of Jindřich Štyrský, Toyen and Jiří Jelínek dating from the early, geometrical, period of Artificialism are based on the borderline between abstraction and figuration. At the same time these works open up the theme of the inter-war avant-garde, represented in the museum’s collection by some of its finest pieces. The exceptionally fine series of Surrealist-oriented art of the 1930s includes expressions of lyrical and Surrealist-inspired Cubism (Alois Wachsman, František Muzika), late Artificialism (Toyen) and various forms of Surrealism (Jindřich Štyrský, František Janoušek). This collection also features the works of younger Surrealists (František Hudeček and Ladislav Zívr) who later founded the most important art groups of the 1940s – Group 42.
The Czech Museum of Fine Arts owns what is probably the most comprehensive series of works by the three most important Czech art groups of the 1940s that introduced the new ‘great theme’ of civilisation into artistic life. Skupina 42 [Group 42], Ra and Sedm v říjnu [Seven in October] contributed to forming the basis of the existential conception of humanist aesthetics in Czech art. The museum collection also documents the Surrealist phase to be found in the work of leading members of Group 42 prior to the founding of the group itself. Dating from the 1930s, these works are relatively rare. The bulk of the collection of paintings, drawings and prints, however, dates from the 1940s (František Gross, František Hudeček, Ladislav Zívr, Kamil Lhoták, Jan Smetana, Jan Kotík and Karel Souček). The Ra group is represented in the museum’s collections by the work of Václav Tikal, Josef Istler, Bohdan Lacina and Václav Zykmund. Paintings by members of the Seven in October group (Václav Hejna, Josef Liesler, František Jiroudek and Arnošt Paderlík) represent an equally outstanding set of works in the museum’s collection. Completing the collection of art dating from the 1940s are works by solo figures such as Zdeněk Sklenář, František Muzika, Václav Sychra, Jan Bauch, František Tichý, Karel Černý and Václav Bartovský.
Another significant chapter is represented by an exceptionally integral and diverse set of works encompassing the period from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, documenting the gradually increasing creative dynamics of Czech art, which succeeded in becoming part of the European context from the mid-1960s.
The collection features a well-balanced series of works dating from the period when the art groups Trasa [Route], Máj [May], UB 12 and Etapa [Stage] emerged on the Czech art scene. A unique and richly structured series of Art Informel works represents the radical and existentially oriented expression of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The opposing trend of geometrical abstraction is represented in the museum’s collection by the work of leading members associated with the activity of the Křižovatka [Crossroads] group and with the exhibition Nová citlivost [New Sensibility] held in 1968. The set of paintings, object-assemblages and sculptures by the neo-Dadaist Šmidrové [Šmidras] group is one of the museum collection’s highlights. It was also one of the final series of works acquired during the period the Central Bohemian Gallery flourished during the 1960s.
During the 1970s and ’80s, the acquisition programme of the gallery altered radically. While the 1960s had been characterised by a preference for Modernist trends (ranging from Cubism, the avant-garde of the 1920s and ’30s and non-conformist art of the 1940s through to the latest trends of the ’60s), the gallery administration associated with the hard-line ‘normalisation’ regime began systematically focusing on conservative and traditional trends of Czech art. Much interest was devoted to all kinds of realism, landscape art (many valuable examples of which were acquired, especially dating from the turn of the 20th century), though also art that was ideologically tendential in character. Expressions of authentic art created outside the structures of official culture during the 1970s and ’80s were completely ignored, however.
During this adverse period, Czech art lost the opportunity to communicate directly with European art, as a result of which it drew all the more on the sources of its domestic tradition. It began expressing itself much more through hidden metaphors and allegories. At that time a series of unique works were created that lent a specific existential flavour to the development of Czech art.
At the beginning of the 1990s, therefore, the gallery was faced with a new task – reconstructing at least partially the history of art that had managed, during the adverse years of ‘normalisation’, to maintain the continuity of independent art. The newly-assembled curatorial team began, for example, by collecting works from the circle of photographic verism of the 1970s and existentially-oriented figuration reflecting the stifling atmosphere of the ‘normalisation’ era. At the same time it began creating the basis of a series of works by artists of the 1970s generation associated with the subsequent founding of the 12/15 Better Late Than Never group. This orientation does not represent the museum’s acquisition activity in its entirety, however.
Since the 1990s the museum has also succeeded in acquiring several outstanding works from outside the Czech Republic (such as a painting by Erró and a set of prints by Robert Rauschenberg). These works are incorporated in the context of the Czech art collection, as a part of which they will be exhibited at the museum’s permanent exhibition at the Arts Centre in Kutná Hora.
Like every other museum of fine art that seeks to address the public with a lively programme, the Czech Museum of Fine Arts seeks to closely follow developments occurring on the art scene and try to identify values in them that will have something to say to future generations. For this reason the museum is progressively acquiring recent work linked with the Postmodernist generation represented above all by the Tvrdohlaví [Stubborn Ones] group as well as the work of young artists who are confidently finding their place in the present-day European context.
This is the only way the museum can succeed in its challenge to present a lively and diverse image of Czech art and its continuity in the complex historical conditions of the Central European crossroads.
Alena Potůčková