Czech Republic: Mirabilia in Czech Land

Pavel Šmíd - Stars (2016)

This is Magic Prague: a shouting babel that bewilders as I try to fight my way among the crowds of tourists, the knick-knack sellers, touts outside restaurants, menu in hand, offering “rissoti alla milanese” and “spaghetti alla bolognese”; young black sailors, in white and blue uniforms, inviting visitors to take an unforgettable boat trip on the Vlatva river; vintage cars carrying around tourists in the grip of selfie mania. Along the road are a host of money change huts and Thai massage centres abound, all with tanks of hungry Garra Rufa at their entrance, awaiting clients in search of a fish pedicure to soak their feet; there is no shortage of signs that promise, in Italian, “fresh ice cream (sic!), homemade, delicious.” This is Magic Prague, turned into a Disneyland, more so than any other landmark city of Western Europe, including... Venice!

Andrea Demek - Demarcation (2016)



Traveling to Brno. The dense and fascinating Bohemian forest, is followed by the harmonious and welcoming Moravian countryside, with its cherry and apple trees laden with fruits on the roadside. The appointment with Jiří Štourač is in the modern Moravian Library in Brno: an interesting meeting with an artist whose paint- ing is inspired by Piero della Francesca and the twentieth-century trends related to the great Renaissance artist (New Figuration, Metaphysics, Magic Realism).

František Matoušek - Fisherman (2016)



Prague has been, over the course of its history, one of the great centres of European culture, particularly since Rudolf II and his entourage of artists and scien- tists (but also charlatans, adventurers, mediums...) moved to the Bohemian city (1583). Thanks to the emperor’s passion for occult practices and art, the traditional magical characterization of the city and a taste for formal hybridizations that distinguished Bohemian art in the twentieth century emerged, earning it the reputation of a cen- tre of the avant-garge, although, more than other avant-garde places, it was strong- ly linked to the past. Angelo Maria Ripellino, in his famous book Magic Prague, focus- es on this extraordinary cultural originality which brings into the 20th century an edgy and gloomy Gothic and a sumptuous golden and black Baroque, weaving them with the new avant-garde from Paris, Berlin and Moscow. This original Czech art then en- counters Surrealism, of which Toyen is one of the leading figures, and continues on to the experiments of visual and concrete poetry by Jiří Kolář, Ladislav Novák and Edu- ard Ovčáček finding an exceptional protagonist in Václav Havel and his Anticodes.1

Pavel Pecina - Christmas scene (2016)

On the back of the entrenchment of the experiences of concrete, visual and sound poetry, some artists make extensive use of text and speech. An important role is played by music, almost in a Schopenhauerian manner, as a language to which all others tend. Many Czech artists are in fact also musicians, their work is set between sculpture and sound art, by creating sculptural sound objects, which give life to im- provisations, visual-sound installations, true concerts. As elsewhere in contemporary art, sociological investigation as a language of the work is clearly evident, as is an attention to nature, to landscape, achieved both accurately and academically, and through the use of new media.

Petr Johanus - Censorship (2016)

There is “a before and after the revolution” in the discourses of most of the artists involved. The Czech Republic is, in fact, the former Warsaw Pact country in which the dramatic events of 1989 assumed the appearance of a true revolution. The one-party state of the previous decades was followed by a clear break: the Charter 77 semi-clandestine opposition, headed by Václav Havel, took power, and the well- known dissident became President of Czechoslovakia. In this way, a level of radical- ism, unexpected just a few years earlier, materialized; the dream of the Prague Spring (1969), suppressed by Soviet intervention. Soon after the revolution, the secession of Slovakia led to the emergence of the Czech Republic. We are therefore in the pres- ence of an epochal schism that has taken the form of an historic and social divide. Czech contemporary art very clearly highlights that this divide was also aesthetic.

Liliana Malta Artist and Curator