Exhibition Archive

Federico Díaz—Prosperity

Patrik Pelikán—Shortfall

A rigid and brittle layer applied to a flexible matrix will break with ease, though this does not necessarily signify its destruction. The pursuit of sustainability is a laborious process and change is thus to be embraced with relief: when monitoring...

Cage, Adamčiak, Grygar—Silence, Sound, Music

A relationship between music and the visual arts has existed in our civilization since before the terms music and art were first defined. After all, shamanic dance cannot be imagined without the necessary visual effects and various pagan holidays fea...

Monika Žáková—Kubín–Žáková–Coubine

Monika Žáková is a representative of a distinctive new generation of painters dedicated to exploring pictorial abstraction. The artist’s analytical thinking is reflected in her compositions, in which she focuses on the deconstruction of visual and pe...

Jana Kasalová—Mater Urbium

Jana Kasalová re-evaluates our conventional understanding of space, relativizing its reality using cartography. Once recorded on a map, geopolitical developments were fixed in time while colourful historical events were inevitably reduced to points ...

Petr Skala—See the Light

Petr Skala is one of the most distinctive Czech experimental filmmakers. However, as he stood outside of the mainstream and, perhaps more importantly, behind the Iron Curtain, he failed to achieve significant international recognition as a young filmmaker.

Jan Gemrot—New Horizons

In the 1990s, Zdeněk Beran’s studio of classical painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague gave rise to a generation of artists employing various types of realistic expression. The success of Beran’s students, including Hynek Martinec and Karel ...

Luboš Plný & David Cajthaml—Waiting Room

The Waiting Room exhibition presents Luboš Plný’s Medical Subject Matter Series. The featured collages were initially created in the early 1990s when Plný applied for studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

Stano Filko & Rudolf Samohejl—70/80

Stano Filko (1937–2015) belongs to a strong generation of Slovak conceptualists whose work is held in high regard on the international art scene. Beginning with the 1960s, Filko gradually became a respected authority and both his solo and group proje...

Timo

Working under a secretive pseudonym, Timo is known above all for his street-art activities verging on satire and provocation. His numerous public space projects include e.g. a subversive modification of the Albert supermarket chain logo, reimagined a...

Jaromír 99

Working under the pseudonym of Jaromír 99, Jaromír Švejdík has been known above all as a musician, e.g. as a founding member of Priessnitz. However, he has gone on to make a name for himself as a creative and experimental artist with an impressive aesthetic reminiscent of both film noir and pop art.

Šimotová–Boštík

Václav Boštík (1913–2005) and Adriena Šimotová (1926–2014) were remarkable figures whose significance transcends the boundaries of the Czech art scene. Both Boštík and Šimotová were fundamentally interested in experimenting with diverse art forms, wi...

Jan Knap—Paradise on Earth

Jan Knap's intimate stories of harmony are painted in a classic style which completely defies existing trends. His paintings feature a positive world. With endearing stubbornness, he has been allowing his heavenly Jerusalem to experience everyday reality for over thirty years.

After Velvet

In addition to producing a general sense of national euphoria, the events of November 1989 also resulted in great expectations on the Czechoslovak art scene. The establishment of new galleries in Prague helped create a more agile platform for artisti...

In the Name of Czechoslovakia—Tribute to a Non-Existent Country

On 14 May 1916, the Czechoslovak National Council – originally under the somewhat misleading French title of Conseil national des Pays tchèques – was established in the present-day Czech Centre headquarters at 18 rue Bonaparte in Paris. Its leaders, ...

Altamira Blackout

A selection of Czech post-war art from the Pro arte portfolio featuring pieces from the 1945 to 1989 period, i.e. works created predominantly during periods of political repression. Where Altamira signifies the temple of art, the titular blackout sta...

On the Waves of Modernism

František Kupka’s Wave (1904—1905), one of the 105 illustrations included in his Man and Earth series, was selected as the exhibition’s title image for several reasons. At Pro arte, we believe that the entire series, created between 1904 and 1906, co...