BACK THEN IN EUROPE. Czech Artists in Totalitarian Regimes 1938–1953

22/09/2017 to 21/01/2018
exhibition hall Masné krámy
Autor: 
Marie Klimešová, Hana Rousová, Zbyněk Baladrán
Kurátor: 
Ivana Jonáková

The 1940s was an almost apocalyptical period of two totalities and one war, the time of the absence of freedom and of constant danger, when hundreds of thousands of refugees were streaming across Europe and outside it unwanted, when millions were abducted and murdered. And what about the arts? The only realm of the real creative freedom remains within the artists themselves, within their desires and anger.

Lately, there have been several important exhibition of Czech art of the 1940s. The history of it in various contexts and aspects was explored especially by exhibitions of the authors submitting the project proposal, namely Roky ve dnech (Years in Days) (M. Klimešová) and Konec avantgardy? (The End of the Avant-Garde?) (H. Rousová et al.) in Prague, Skupina 42 (Group 42) (M. Klimešová) in Pilsen, or Zastihla je noc (The Night Overtakes Them) (A. Pravdová) in Cheb and Brno. Their intent is to show that the history of art is a discipline whose purpose is realized by its ability to comment on the present. It may be one of the paradoxes of history that the 1940s – an almost apocalyptical period of two totalities and one war – show a number of tokens, current once again, however, the ones we tend to attribute solely to cultures other than European. We perceive the one that is most distinct for us – the endless crowd of refugees lacking individuality in our eyes that are flowing from territories destructed by war with our European, often arrogant, distance. We fail to realize that Europe experienced something very similar in the 1940s – in those 1940s that were the time of the absence of freedom and of constant danger, when hundreds of thousands of refugees were streaming across Europe and outside it unwanted, when millions were abducted and murdered. And what about the arts? The only realm of the real creative freedom remains within the artists themselves, within their desires and anger.
Therefore, the exhibition is focusing especially on the above two aspects. The artefacts have been selected regardless their art-group or other affiliation, but according to their distinctively private or even provocative view of the world and of its eternal values, that were then ruthlessly destroyed. They shall be presented directly on the background of a vast number of small period documentary photographs of fleeing or abducted people – youths, children, elderly, sick …, and visualised organized into diagrams with statistic figures. The exhibition should be a visual essay on preserving one’s personal integrity in limit existential situations.

 

Emigration of German Anti-Fascists to Bohemia
Refugees from the Sudetenland
Refugees from Nazism
Transports of Jews, Gypsies and Political Pisoners
Expulsion of Germans
Resettlement of the Borderlands
Refugees from Communism

 

Authors: Hana Rousová, Marie Klimešová, Zbyněk Baladrán
Curator: Marcela Štýbrová
Architect: Zbyněk Baladrán
Graphic design: Adéla Svobodová
Photo editing: Radek Typovský 
Language editor: Lenka Jindrová
English translation: EUFRAT Group, s. r. o. (Richard Savage)
Installation: Jan Jirka, Jaroslav Pašek, Miroslav Tázler
Cut graphics: Jakub Čermák
Accompanying program: Jiří Hlobil, Marcela Štýbrová

Artworks for the exhibition were lent by:
Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou
Brno City Museum
Czech News Agency
Galerie Moderna
Maldoror Gallery
Prague City Gallery
Profimedia.CZ Ltd.
Regional Art Gallery Liberec
State Regional Archive of Domažlice seated in Horšovský Týn
State Regional Archive of Liberec
The East Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice
The Gallery of Central Bohemia
The Gallery of Fine Art in Cheb
The Gallery of Fine Art in Ostrava
The Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové
The Gallery of Modern Art in Roudnice nad Labem
The Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen
The Memorial of National Literature
The Moravian Gallery in Brno
The Museum of West Bohemia in Pilsen
The North Bohemian Gallery of Fine Arts in Litoměřice
The Town Museum in Chotěboř
Zlatá husa Gallery
Ztichlá klika Gallery
private collections
authors’ own archives

The project was implemented with financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the State Fund for Culture of the Czech Republic.