GALLERY OF WEST BOHEMIA, PILSEN by ACC Art Books

DIRECTORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S CHOICE

THE GALLERY OF WEST BOHEMIA IN PILSEN Roman Musil

DIRECTORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S CHOICE

THE GALLERY OF WEST BOHEMIA IN PILSEN Roman Musil

INTRODUCTION The history of the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen is directly related to the establishment of a nationwide network of regional galleries of fine arts in what was then Czechoslovakia, initiated by the Ministry of Information and Enlightenment in the early 1950s. The Regional Gallery in Pilsen was established on 7 June 1953, and from 1 January 1954 it officially started to fulfil its mission. From the outset it was located in the premises of the Museum of West Bohemia in Pilsen, from which it also acquired part of the fine art collections from the former Museum of Decorative Arts of West Bohemia, founded in Pilsen in 1878. Another part of the Gallery’s collection was transferred from the closed Public Picture Gallery of the Royal City of Pilsen, which had been established in 1912–13. It was not until 1972 that the Gallery had its own building – the former medieval meat market, originally built in 1392, now known as Masné krámy (‘Meat Market’), which, after several major reconstructions, has served as its main exhibition hall. The Gallery later took over three more venues under its management: one of them is the ‘13’ Exhibition Hall, suitable for smaller exhibition projects, which was renovated by the architects Roman Koutský and Šárka Malá in 2009. Another building houses the unique Semler Residence, designed by the renowned architect Adolf Loos and his collaborator Heinrich Kulka, who applied to it the principles of so-called Raumplan (the height of each room is related to the room’s function). The newly refurbished gallery spaces will provide a research centre for the study of regional architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as part of an already existing collection of architecture. The Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen focuses on art from the Middle Ages to the present, its key collections including Czech art from the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth – i.e. from

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The ‘13’ Exhibition Hall. Exhibition: Robert V. Novák / A Time Optimist, 28 August–28 October 2013

romanticism to modernism – with a collection of works of Czech cubism that is extraordinary both in its quality and in its size, and one of the finest in the Czech Republic. The Gallery received the status of a research organisation from the Council for Research, Development and Innovation, which is the expert and advisory body of the government of the Czech Republic, as the only regional gallery in the Czech Republic, mainly owing to its professional activities, especially in the field of large research exhibitions and publication projects. In 2015, when Pilsen became the European Capital of Culture, the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen was one of the main cultural institutions involved, participating in several important projects of international significance. One of them, the exhibition and publication of Gottfried Lindauer – Pilsen Painter of New Zealand Māori, organised in cooperation with the Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in Auckland, won the Czech ICOM Committee Award. Since 1981, when the prestigious Pilsen Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Issues of the Nineteenth Century took place for the first time, organised by experts in various fields of the social sciences in the Czech Republic and elsewhere, the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen has been one of the main partners and co-organisers. The Gallery prepares an exhibition for each symposium, with an accompanying catalogue corresponding to the theme selected for the particular year. The Gallery is now one of the most important art museums in the country, and its professional potential, its exhibition policy and the quality of its collections mean that it will be able to cooperate more extensively with other key institutions not only in the Czech Republic but also abroad.

Masné krámy Exhibition Hall. Exhibition: Gottfried Lindauer 1839–1926: Pilsen Painter of the New Zealand Māori, 6 May–20 September 2015

INTRODUCTION

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The ‘13’ Exhibition Hall. Exhibition: Robert V. Novák / A Time Optimist, 28 August–28 October 2013

Masné krámy Exhibition Hall. Exhibition: Gottfried Lindauer 1839–1926: Pilsen Painter of the New Zealand Māori, 6 May–20 September 2015

INTRODUCTION

Master of the Michle Madonna, or Workshop

Madonna of Dýšina, 1350s Limewood, h. 43 cm, w. 11 cm, d. 9.5 cm Inv. no. P 2 Acquired in 1954

As its style suggests, the sculpture of the Madonna of Dýšina originated in the 1350s in the workshop of the anonymous Master of the Michle Madonna, a leading figure in the sculpture of the 1330s to 1350s in Bohemia before the emergence of Petr Parléř. The small, beautifully formed statuette is morphologically linked to items associated with the workshop of Master of the Michle Madonna: the Madonna’s facial features, her intimate connection to the Christ Child, the cross-legged position of the child and a slightly protruding bare foot, referring to the Gospel (Gen. 3:15), link it to the Michle Madonna; the head and shoulders, wrapped in a draped veil (maphorion), connect this work to the Madonna of Prostějov. The statuette is incomplete (the crown, Mary’s left forearm, Jesus’ right arm and left forearm are missing) and has been damaged by earlier alterations (the curls over Mary’s forehead were removed as well as the polychrome). This iconographic type depicts the Mother of God as the Queen of Heaven according to the antiphon Ave regina caelorum. The figure of the Madonna was probably topped with a tall metal crown and a sceptre in her left hand. In her right hand, the infant is lifted up as the incarnate Saviour. The figure of a crowned Madonna, her garment ritually stuffed under her feet and holding the symbolically half-naked infant Jesus in her right arm, accentuates the salvific significance of Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice, and the role of the Mother of God, representing the Church (Ecclesia). This petite statuette of the Madonna has been cut and carved with the same degree of detail from all sides, which suggests that it was intended to be placed in an open space. Perhaps it was meant to serve for private devotion, but it could equally well have been placed on an altar stone in a church in Pilsen or the surrounding area.

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Master of the Michle Madonna, or Workshop

Madonna of Dýšina, 1350s Limewood, h. 43 cm, w. 11 cm, d. 9.5 cm Inv. no. P 2 Acquired in 1954

M A D O N N A O F D Ý Š I N A |

Master of the Vejprnice Altarpiece

Panel from the Vejprnice Altarpiece, c. 1490 Tempera, hallmarked gilt, wood, 162 × 118 cm Inv. no. O 111 Acquired in 1954

At the end of the fifteenth century a monumental wooden panel was ordered from one of the painters’ workshops in Nuremberg, probably for the main altar of the parish church of St Vojtěch (Adalbert) in Vejprnice, near Pilsen. Pilsen had a close relationship with Nuremberg throughout the Middle Ages, and after the Hussite wars, when Prague lost its former artistic prestige, Pilsen ordered quality sculptures and paintings from Nuremberg to furnish the local churches. The panel depicts a crowned Virgin Mary with Child, standing on a crescent moon (a type called Assumpta – i.e. taken to Heaven – referring to the text of the Revelation of Saint John, Rev. 12:1) accompanied by the country patron saints, Vojtěch and Wenceslas. The saints associated with the beginnings of Czech statehood represent spiritual and secular power. The Virgin Mary, with an imperial mitre on her head, a sceptre in her right hand and the Christ Child in her left, is presented as the Queen of Heaven (Regina Caeli). The face of the moon under her foot symbolises the ephemeral world and Original Sin, redeemed by Christ – the new Adam, incarnated through the Virgin Mary, who, as Ecclesia, symbolises the Church. The gilded background, decorated with engraved and hallmarked ornaments, complements the sacred atmosphere of the scene and emphasises the ethereal grandeur of the characters. The exceptional altarpiece was removed from the main altar apparently during the reconstruction of the church between 1722 and 1726 and relocated to one of the surrounding chapels. Shortly after the opening of a new Municipal Historical Museum building in 1913, Princess Kunhuta of Lobkowicz donated this precious artefact to the museum, which later became part of today’s Museum of West Bohemia in Pilsen. From there the panel was relocated to the collection of the Gallery of West Bohemia.

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Master of the Vejprnice Altarpiece

Panel from the Vejprnice Altarpiece, c. 1490 Tempera, hallmarked gilt, wood, 162 × 118 cm Inv. no. O 111 Acquired in 1954

P A N E L F R O M T H E V E J P R N I C E A L T A R P I E C E |

Master IW (active 1520–50)

Epitaph of Kašpar Kašpárek, 1538 Oil tempera on wood, 82 × 56 cm Inv. no. O 112 Acquired in 1954

Master IW (also known as the Monographist IW) worked in Bohemia as a follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, one of the most renowned Renaissance painters in the German lands. One hypothesis claims that the monogram IW links him to the historically documented painter Jan (Ioannes) Wrtilka of Louny. The Master IW adopted the aesthetically attractive style of Cranach and became the finest of his disciples working independently. He was probably able to use designs drawn in Cranach’s workshop and also drew inspiration from Albrecht Dürer’s graphic works. The epitaph of the Pilsen burgher Kašpar Kašpárek was originally placed by the altar of Our Lady in the chapel of St Anne, donated by Kašpárek himself to the church of the Franciscan monastery in Pilsen, where the family had a tomb. The devotional painting of the Virgin and Child was transformed into an epitaph by adding the figures of the donors and an inscribed dedication. It served as both an eschatological and a commemorative item: the donor reminds the Saviour and Our Lady of himself and his kin; at the same time he preserves the memory of himself and his family for future generations. The dedication on the rood screen reads: ‘In 1537, on 6 March, Kašpar Kašpárek, a respected Pilsen burgher, patron and donor of this altar, died. In 1565 Ursula, his honoured wife, died on 13 February, and both are buried herein.’ The donors declare before the altar of Our Lady, symbolised by the Madonna (Ecclesia), that they are eager to participate in eternal bliss. The Virgin Mary holds a bunch of grapes, from which the Child offers the donor berries (containing the blood of Christ) as the saving sacrifice. The partly open mouth indicates speaking, perhaps the words of St John’s Gospel (John 6:51): ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread, will live for ever.’

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Master IW (active 1520–50)

Epitaph of Kašpar Kašpárek, 1538 Oil tempera on wood, 82 × 56 cm Inv. no. O 112 Acquired in 1954

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Matyáš (Matthias) Bernard Braun (Sautens, Austria, 1684–1738 Prague)

The Annunciation to Our Lady, 1720–25 Limewood, h. 96 cm, w. 54.5 cm, d. 33 cm (angel); h. 60 cm, w. 45 cm, d. 54 cm (Virgin Mary) Inv. no. P 19 Acquired in 1954

Matyáš Bernard Braun was born in the village of Sautens in Tyrol, on the estate of the Cistercian monastery in Stams, where he was introduced to Baroque sculpting with its dynamic modelling and momentum. Some time before 1699 he travelled to Rome via Venice and Florence. Influenced by the examples of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his followers, he developed his own distinctive approach to sculpture, using sharp modelling, contrasts of light and shade, a dynamic attitude and an emotionally exalted expression that indicates a spiritual trance and makes the viewer feel involved. Upon his return from Italy in 1704, Braun left Stams, where restoration work on the monastery had stopped for financial reasons and no sculptural commissions were available. He was hired by Eugen Tyttl, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Plasy, West Bohemia, who, at that time, was in charge of an ambitious reconstruction scheme there. The sculpture of The Annunciation to Our Lady belongs to a series of works that Braun made for the abbot and the monastery. The lively characters expressively depict the dramatic dialogue from St Luke’s Gospel (Luke 1:26–38): The archangel Gabriel, in a dramatically flowing garment, and with a movement of his left arm derived from the Roman gesture adlocutio, addresses Mary. She receives the message with her head bowed, her arms open as a humble servant, her face mirroring her contradictory feelings of joy and anxiety. The upright posture, vigour and decisiveness on the one side and humble kneeling, patience and surrender on the other create a tension in the relationship between the figures, evoking this decisive moment in Salvation history. Braun spent the rest of his life in Bohemia, where he was an influential figure in the development of High Baroque sculpture.

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Matyáš (Matthias) Bernard Braun (Sautens, Austria, 1684–1738 Prague)

The Annunciation to Our Lady, 1720–25 Limewood, h. 96 cm, w. 54.5 cm, d. 33 cm (angel); h. 60 cm, w. 45 cm, d. 54 cm (Virgin Mary) Inv. no. P 19 Acquired in 1954

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Karel Purkyně (Breslau, Prussia, 1834–1868 Prague)

Still Life with a Grouse, 1861 Oil on wood, 78 × 57 cm Inv. no. O 630 Purchased in 1965

The son of the famous physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyně, the painter, illustrator and art critic Karel Purkyně was not held in particularly high regard by his fellow art critics. However, he was one of the pioneers of realism in the fine arts in Bohemia. From 1854 to 1857 he studied under J. B. Berdellé and Thomas Couture in Munich and Paris, where he also became acquainted with the old masters such as Rubens, Velázquez and Rembrandt in the local collections. In Paris he encountered realism and plein air painting for the first time, and was strongly influenced by the romanticism of Eugène Delacroix. Purkyně lacks the edge of Gustave Courbet’s social criticism; to him, questions of seeing and depicting and the ontological status of the image were more important. He developed a pure painting style based on colour and light effects. He was mostly a portraitist, but between 1861 and 1862 he painted a series of five still lifes, including the Snow Owl. His portrait and still life painting came together in 1860 in his most famous work, The Portrait of Jech the Blacksmith. In 1861, when he painted and exhibited Still Life with Onions and Partridges, Still Life with a Peacock and the Pheasants, he also created the lesser-known Still Life with a Grouse, which differs from his other paintings on hunting topics both by virtue of the medium – a wooden panel, allowing for a more accurate capturing of detail than canvas – and by the absence of a window sill that would enhance the spatial illusion. However, the latter is achieved by the minutely detailed elaboration of the surface texture, which produces a trompe l’oeil effect. Purkyně refers back to the fundamentals of the genre, as seen in Still Life with a Partridge and Iron Gloves, the first known still life, painted by Jacopo de’ Barbari in 1504 (now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich).

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Karel Purkyně (Breslau, Prussia, 1834–1868 Prague)

Still Life with a Grouse, 1861 Oil on wood, 78 × 57 cm Inv. no. O 630 Purchased in 1965

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Jan Zrzavý (Okrouhlice 1890–1977 Prague)

Sleepwalker, 1913 Oil, canvas on plywood, 79.5 × 44 cm Inv. no. O 1002 Purchased in 1978

Jan Zrzavý is a phenomenon sui generis in Czech art. Although his savagely expressive works from the beginning of the first decade of the twentieth century are similar in style to the work of the emerging generation of young painters centred around the Osma (‘Eight’) group, he soon abandoned their formal innovations and adopted a smooth primitivist and classicist painting style. He was a one-off in terms of Czech art, but was always highly respected and appreciated even by avant-garde artists. The first monograph on his work was written and published by the theorist and fine artist Karel Teige in 1924. Throughout his career, Zrzavý strove to imbue his paintings with spiritual meaning, to unveil the hidden symbolism behind things and display his inner visions. All this is demonstrated in the Sleepwalker of 1913, a monochrome painting of green-blue tones with a phantom figure without a face balancing on top of a sloping roof. The moonlight plastically shapes the figure, which is clearly drawn against the background of the stylised towers of the dream city and the dark sky. Zrzavý has managed to convey the magic of the moonlit night, the mysterious forces of the full moon and an altered state of consciousness. The motif of the moon is reiterated in Zrzavý’s other paintings and drawings (e.g. Moon with Violets, 1913). At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries this theme was very popular, as is demonstrated by the painting Sleepwalker by Maxmilián Pirner (1879), and the motif of the moon-induced trance was also captured by the painter and graphic designer Jan Konůpek. Zrzavý was thus closely connected to the tradition of symbolism, and he transposed it, albeit using different techniques, on to the modern art of the twentieth century.

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S L E E P W A L K E R |

Jan Zrzavý (Okrouhlice 1890–1977 Prague)

Sleepwalker, 1913 Oil, canvas on plywood, 79.5 × 44 cm Inv. no. O 1002 Purchased in 1978

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Jiří Kolář (Protivín 1914–2002 Prague)

In Paradise on a Trial Period, 1962–78 Rollage, chiasmage, paper on a wooden panel, 100 × 71.3 cm Inv. no. O 1408 Acquired in 2003

The poet and fine artist Jiří Kolář is one of the most famous Czech artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Persecuted by the Communist regime of the time, he left the country in 1979 and made Paris his second home. He wanted to break free from language, as he felt uneasy about how it was becoming a tool for manipulation. He dreamed of returning to more authentic forms of communication; thus visual elements began to replace words and he became a fine artist in the 1960s. In 1962 he organised an exhibition entitled Depatesie in Prague, to a minimal reception – its landmark significance becoming appreciated only today. He exhibited a number of his innovative experiments there, such as visual poetry, rollage and chiasmage, his first ‘knot poems’ on pieces of string, a broken mirror and blank paper accompanied by a note to visitors encouraging them to fill it in as they please. Chiasmage consists of torn pieces of text that are glued in various directions on a wooden panel; rollage consists of cutting a pattern into narrow strips that are reassembled into a dynamic optical structure. He produced a compilation of these new approaches in the book Dictionnaire des méthodes, published in France in 1991. For In Paradise on a Trial Period, Kolář used the basic techniques of collage. (The translator A. M. Ripellino remarked that Kolář’s surname was a nominalistic echo of the word ‘collage’, similarly to Kubišta the cubist.) Kolář did not consider his collage techniques to be destructive; instead, he saw them as creative and adding new meanings. The same is true of this work, where we can see motifs from the central panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490–1510), to which the obviously ironic title adds another layer of meaning.

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I N P A R A D I S E O N A T R I A L P E R I O D |

Jiří Kolář (Protivín 1914–2002 Prague)

In Paradise on a Trial Period, 1962–78 Rollage, chiasmage, paper on a wooden panel, 100 × 71.3 cm Inv. no. O 1408 Acquired in 2003

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Běla Kolářová (Terezín 1923–2010 Prague)

Safety Pin Pattern, 1965 Assemblage on cardboard, 80 × 60 cm Inv. no. O 1409 Purchased from the artist in 2003

The wife of Jiří Kolář, Běla Kolářová spent much of her life in her husband’s shadow, and the general public has become aware of her work only gradually. It was not until the 1990s that she was fully recognised as an artist in her own right, and later her participation at the 2007 contemporary art exhibition Documenta, in Kassel in Germany, was a tipping point in this respect. She started out as a photographer, experimenting with various photographic techniques. Inspired by commercial advertising, she later began to create photographic compositions, for which she deliberately used objects of dubious aesthetic merit. At first she photographed methodically arranged ‘garbage’, such as egg and walnut shells or beer and lemonade bottle caps; later the uniformity of these objects led her actively to seek out visual uniformity. She created the remarkable series Alphabet of Things in 1964, presenting photographs of objects that could be read as letters of the alphabet. Then she decided that photographs were not enough and started using the objects themselves. She glued them into assemblages, putting groups of a single object in a regular stencil grid; most often the objects were related to the ‘feminine’ world (safety pins, wave clamps, bobby pins, hairpins), but she also used other common objects such as matches, paper clips or razors. The choice of objects and the regularity of the structure were essential features for these assemblages, and so was the matter-of-factness of the items used. These assemblages, including the work shown here, make Kolářová’s work part of the trend towards minimalism and constructivism in the 1960s. At the same time, it is seen as a precursor of so-called feminist art, owing to the deliberate use of objects from the ‘female world’ (drawings done in lipstick, assemblages of cosmetic items etc.).

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Běla Kolářová (Terezín 1923–2010 Prague)

Safety Pin Pattern, 1965 Assemblage on cardboard, 80 × 60 cm Inv. no. O 1409 Purchased from the artist in 2003

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This edition © Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd, 2019 Text and photographs © The Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen, 2019 First edition published in 2019 by Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd 10 Lion Yard Tremadoc Road London SW4 7NQ, United Kingdom www.scalapublishers.com In association with the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen Pražská 13 301 00 Pilsen, Czech Republic www.zpc-galerie.cz ISBN: 978-1-78551-200-1 Editor: Roman Musil Text: Eva Bendová (p. 77); Petr Domanický (p. 62); Aleš Filip (pp. 17, 38, 43); Petr Jindra (pp. 7, 9, 10, 13, 44); Petra Kočová (pp. 56, 65); Roman Musil (pp. 4–5, 20, 24, 29, 30, 32–33, 35, 37, 40); Alena Pomajzlová (pp. 46, 49, 50, 53, 55, 58, 66, 69, 71, 72, 74, 78), Ivana Skálová (pp. 14, 18, 23, 26, 61) Translation: EUFRAT Group, Pilsen (Tomáš Hausner, Connaire Haggan) Language editing: Matthew Taylor Project manager: Hannah Bowen Graphic design: Bušek & Dienstbier Photography: Karel Kocourek, Oto Palán Printed in Turkey 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen and Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd. Director’s Choice is a registered trademark of Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers.

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Front cover: Gabriel von Max, Siesta, 1890s pp. 2–3: Antonín Chittussi, Winter Landscape, 1883–84 Back cover: Emil Filla, Bottle, Glass and Pipe, 1913