Paintings exhibition

This collection of clocks and watches from Prague Castle works together to form a fascinating whole, documenting the development of the measurement of time, interior design during the last 250 years, and the craftsmanship of renowned watchmakers and clockmakers from Prague and Western Europe.

The exhibited clocks are regarded as pieces of period movement and art-craft work, forming the reason why they were accompanied by other items from the Prague Castle collections. The visitors have a chance to, at one place, see items from the representative spaces, offices, cabinets, habitable rooms and depositories of the Prague Castle and Lany chateau.

There are 103 clockworks and their parts exhibited, accompanied by 23 collection pieces – comodas, mirrors, chandeliers etc. Event: 19.06.2008 – 28.09.2008. Venue: The Imperial Stables of The Prague Castle

From the 8th of May till the 30th of June, the CTE group introduce Prague first health food festival, supported by the Prague marathon. In very short, the concept is about introducing the athletes and Prague’s inhabitants with health food.

Through 15 renown chefs offering besides their normal menu a special festival menu, they let all interested discover, that health food is not only healthy, but can also be very tasty.

The CTE group, the official ground handler of the Prague marathon, aim to get as much as possible people to come and try and get inspiration from this festival. They try to get across the message that to live healthy is to feel fit and perform. If you want to know more, you can continue to http://www.healthfoodfestival.com/

Mikolas Ales is one of the most important and well-known Czech artists. Now you have a change to see his works at the big retrospective exhibition called Mikolas Ales 1852 – 2007, which is being held in the Prague Castle Riding School until 20th of April 2008.

In the exhibition you can see representative overview of Ales´ work, mostly he was inspired by the Czech history and traditions. There are drawings and paintings on the theme of the life of Old Slavonic people, who lived in Bohemia in ancient times, scenes of important moments of the Czech history, pictures depicting the idyllic life of Czech lands inhabitants or illustrating national stories, proverbs and legends.

The complete information is here. You know you want to know more!

Contemporary art, that stands out of the main art establishment. This is how the International triennale of contemporary art ITCA 2008 defines itself.

The Exhibition Palace introduces hundreds of pieces of art from the Czech and Slovak Republic, Great Britain, France, Germany or Japan. After Prague Biennale, it is another exhibition aiming to increase interest of public in contemporary art.

There will be workshops and seminars, media campaign is prepared, web pages and catalog are ready. Curators’ choice focuses on non-eatabled art forms, sensitive to what represents esthetic, genre, ideological trends and conventions.

3rd June to 14th September 2008, National Gallery Prague, The Trade Fair Palace (Veletržní palác)

If you want to see some works of contemporary Czech young and successful painters, the good choice is to visit the exhibition, which is now held in The City Gallery Prague in exhibition spaces of the Municipal Library.

Among the artists who exhibit here are Jakub Hosek, who was already twice nominated for prestigious Chalupecky prize for young Czech artists, Petr Malina with his self-portraits, Jakub Spanhel, who became famous for his dark and sizable acryls, Josef Bolf, Petr Petrbok, Filip Cerny and many others, there are almost 30 of them.

The gallery is situated in the building of the Municipal Library, on Marianske Square, but the entrance to the gallery is from Valentinska Street, it is not far from Staromestka metro station (green line). They are open from Thursday to Sunday, always from 10 AM to 6 PM. And exhibition is to be here until 23rd of March 2008.

Read the whole article on prague.net

Michael Rittstein belong to the group of artists, who got to their specific way of expression, which they are probably not going to leave. His gestic paintings, brushed in impasto style are typical by its baroquelly surrealistic illusionism, amplified by poisonous colorfulness and dynamic mummery of characters and objects.

Michael Rittstein’s pictures are displayed as a part of the cycle „Projects, Probes, Experiments“, introducing large format works of art of the artist in dialogue with the unique architectural space of Small Hall of Trade Fair Palace in Prague.

MICHAEL RITTSTEIN´S LARGE FORMATS: THERE, Veletrzni Palac – Trade Fair Palace, Dukelskych hrdinu 47, until: 27th April 2008

From 6th November 2007 to 6th January 2008, visitors have an opportunity to see the exhibition of positive pieces by Emma Srncová. The pictures with dreamlike sceneries, levitating lovers, clowns on bicycles or smiling girls with fluttering hair will be exhibited till the first week of January 2008.

Clowns and Dwarves of Emma Srncova
This big retrospective exhibition of poetic, naive pictures by an author, who has held exhibitions for instance in Germany and Great Britain or Monaco, presents Prague 2 to Emma Srncova’s 65th birthday.

New Town Hall, Karlovo Square, Prague, to 6th January 2008. Everyday except Mo 10-18.

Vaclav Hollar (1607 – 1677) Exhibiton
_{Left: London by Hollar}

The year 2007 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of Václav Hollar, and likewise the three hundred and thirtieth anniversary of his death. Václav Hollar belongs to the far from extensive category of the great Czech artists of past ages who are known to – and admired by – a wide range of international artistic experts as well as by the general public at home and abroad. For nearly all Czechs, his name has become almost synonymous with the graphic arts.

An entire floor has been set aside for the exhibition in the renowned Baroque Kinský Palace, where the interior spaces are particularly suited for the presentation of small-format artworks requiring an intimate atmosphere. In turn, the domestic scale of the palace interiors allows for the ensemble of work to be divided into smaller units representing individual periods of creation.

National Gallery in Prague
Palac Kinskych (Palace of Kinsky family), Staromestske Namesti (Old Town Square), Prague. tel: 224 810 758, www.NGPRAGUE.cz, Opened Daily except Mo 10-18. 11th October 2007 – 13th January 2008

Basic Fee: 100 CZK
From 4 pm: 50 CZK
Discounted: 50 CZK

A competitive exhibition of 5th International Triennial of Graphic named Transfery (Transfers) is possible to see until 11th November 2007 in the Old Town City Hall. Paintings shown are those selected from works of winners of International
Graphic Competitions from 2004-2007. Featured: various graphics from ex libris miniatures to large format installations.

The unique piece of this exhibition would be the Leviathan Eglé Kuckaitov’s mural painting, made by stamps. The 3×4 metes painting depicts a dialog of Franz Kafka and Latvian artist Chiurlionis, and took five days to complete.

Combination of old and new graphic techniques brought victory of the Prague triennial to Belgian Muriel Moreauov.

The young English painter Clare Woods’ paintings is possible to see in Jiri Svestka Gallery, Prague. Woods’ paintings celebrate contested space. The space is at the same time intimate and desolate. These are locations devoid of any particular focus and yet they are places of possible significance – places where someone might be conceived and, as likely, someone might expire.

Woods’ interest in depicting such ambiguous space, so often hidden or overlooked, is in that it is here where wider interests and concerns can be seen to overlap. For example: popular and folk traditions, the pagan and the orthodox and what we understand as urban and as rural.The paintings are derived from photographs of undergrowth.

Taken at night using a camera and flashgun, these images capture the bright colours and reflective surfaces of pockets of scrub. Other images record vegetation obscured not by nightfall but by snowfall. These are abstract paintings and yet within the endless possible readings of the forms that they contain they are somehow psychologically charged and, are uncanny – familiar and yet somehow sinister.

Jiri Svestka Gallery, until 20th October, Tue – Fri – 12.00 – 6.00 p.m. Sat – 11.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m. Biskupsky dvur 6, Prague.

The well-known Czech artists, probably the only contemporary artist (if we exclude Knizak), whose greatness ranges over the Czech pond, has finally his own, long-expected center, here in Prague.

David Cerny, became “famous” after being locked-up by the communist side. At the time of dark communism, he expressed his artistic feeling by painting the Red Armada Tank on former Victory square pink (viz photo, he also erected the middle finger on it). After the wall came down, he made lots of project in the public space. My personal favorite were black, 3 meters long babies, with an air-conditioning shaft instead of a face, crawling up the Zizkovska vez (Zizkov Tower).

His Multicultural center MeetFactory, placed in a fabric hall at Smichovske nadrazi, will be presenting theatre, musicians, films and artists. But there are many other facilities; bookshop, video shop, café, dance club and many, many others.

The opening ceremony is 01th October 2007, and you can come to visit in the street Ke sklarne 15 ever since. The first exhibition is called “The Lost Innocence” and presents graffiti from artists, who painted it in there for the first time.

We are going to inform you about new MeetFactory projects from now on. Its homepage is www.meetfactory.cz

There are three traditional ways to look at Rudolph II – as an ineffective ruler, whose mistakes led directly to the Thirty Years’ War, the more gentle one as a great Renaissance art patron, and, finally – an adorer of occult arts and learning, standing as a seeder of the scientific revolution.

Rudolf loved collecting paintings, he spared no expense in acquiring great past masterworks, such as those of Durer and Brueghel. Rudolf’s galleries were the most impressive in Europe at the time, and the greatest collection of mannerism to this day.

As was customary at the time, the collection was private, but friends of the Emperor, artists, and professional scholars were allowed to study it. Regrettably, Rudolf’s successors did not appreciate the collection and it gradually fell into disarray.

The pieces of art collected by Rudolph II were packed and travelled to Vienna very soon after his death, and the rest were plundered by the Swedish armada. But now it is the time when they are, just for a short time, coming back to the authentic setting of Prague castle. It is possible to see four unique pieces – B. Spranger’s and H. Aachen’s paintings, and A. de Vriese statues. They cohere religious and mythological themes together with eroticism, which the Emperor especially favoured.

You can see the exhibition Rudolphian Beauty daily 9 – 18 in the Prague Castle Picture Gallery until 31th March 2008.

Emil Filla (1882 – 1953) was the leader of the avant-garde movement in Prague between WWI and WWII. A professor at the University of Applied Art, he idolized Vincent van Gogh, Pierre Bonnard and Edvard Munch.

Sometimes called “Czech Van Gogh”, found his style in Cubism. However, he included Expressionism and Surrealism into his paintings, some well-known depicting struggles among animals. Those in reality reflected his anxiety in the pre-war period. He was later imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II. After his release, he began painting more naturally, creating some landscapes, that would be less provocative to the communists.

You can see his retrospective in the Riding school of Prague -(Jizdarna prazského hradu) daily 10–18, until 31. 10. 2007

Contemporary painter and rector of Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts Jiri Sopko is one of the most respected artists in the Czech Republic.

Jiri Sopek’s name is inseparably connected to the Czech painting scene from the end of 20th century. Since the 70’s his expressively and emotionally colorful canvasses, that are at the same time ironic, have been a welcomed member to dozens of exhibitions.

His art is commonly classified as the so called Czech Grotesque.

You can see his canvases in Rudolfinum Gallery (Galerie Rudolfinum) everyday except Monday, since 10am until 6pm. The Exhibition ends 18. 11. 2007

The valuable painting The Allegory of Turkish Wars, made by Bartholomeus Spranger in 1610, has returned to the Prague Castle Picture Gallery after 360 years. Visitors can see it in the permanent exhibition there.

Spranger worked at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. in Prague. Emperor himself ordered the painting, so it was made especially for the collections of Rudolph II. at the Prague Castle.

During the Thirty Years´ Wars, Swedish troops have taken many works of art from Prague as a war booty, including this one. The picture was then lost for several centuries. It was finally discovered in Europe in the 20 ^th century. Now it belongs to a private collection and it was lent to the Prague Castle Picture Gallery for two years. It has an incalculable value at the present time.

The Gallery At The Bethlehem Chapel (Galerie U Betlemske kaple) presents the works of Czech artists who created their works in the period between the beginning of 1890s and 1910 in the exhibition called Czech Secession.

The biggest part of the exhibition is devoted to Alfons Mucha, especially to his decorative posters The Flowers and The Times of the Day and posters from his stay in the Czech Republic. Among other authors whose works are presented at the exhibition are Frantisek Kupka, Max Svabinsky or Vojtech Preissig.

The exhibition is open daily from 10:00 to 18:00 until 16th September 2007. The Gallery At The Bethlehem Chapel is situated in Betlemske namesti 8 in the centre of Prague.

From tomorrow paintings by four painters coming from Valencia and Cartagena in Spain will represent the fine arts in the east cost of Spain to the Prague audience.

The exhibition of paintings by Joel Mestre and Santi Tena from Valencia and Angel Mateo Charris and Gonzalo Sicre from Cartagena is organized by the Czech Museum of Fine Arts in Prague together with SpainArt – the Society for the Support of Spanish Art and Cultural Exchange.

The exhibition takes places in Czech Museum of Fine Arts (Husova 21 street) until 23rd September 2007. It’s open daily (except Monday) from 10:00 to 18:00. The entrance fee is 50 CZK.

Famous works of two co-founders of the abstract painting who lived at the same time but never met – Dutch Piet Mondrian and Czech Frantisek Kupka – are displayed in the Museum Kampa in Prague these days.

Visitors can admire 18 paintings by Piet Mondrian from all periods of his life and compare them with the works of Frantisek Kupka. Kupka is maybe not so well known abroad as Mondrian, but his works belongs among pure abstract art.

Museum Kampa (U Sovovych mlynu) is situated near the river Vltava. The exhibition is open daily from 10:00 to 18:00 until 29th July 2007. The curator of this exhibition is Meda Mladkova.

The Wallenstein Riding School presents one of the outstanding painters of the modern art Jan Zrzavy (1890 – 1977). His works come back after a very successful exhibition 17 years ago.

The exhibition displays more than 150 works of art. According to the curator of the exhibition Zuzana Novotna, the main part is focused on Zrzavy’s best known paintings, such as Kleopatra or Antikrist. Other sections pay attention to his drawings, book illustrations or collected pictures of this famous person.

The exhibition is open until 16th September 2007. The entrance fee is 150 CZK (reduced 70 CZK, family 200 CZK). Visitors can buy a calender for 2008 with Zrzavy’s paintings.

A new gallery for contemporary Czech and foreign art was opened in Prague. It is called “Galerie 5. patro” (“Gallery 5th floor”) and it is situated in the attic of a house in Myslikova Street in the centre of the city. It is just few steps away from another important gallery, the Manes Exhibition Hall.

The new gallery will organize exhibitions of the contemporary art and photographs, auctions of the works and it will release editions about the authors. It is intended as a space for both the general public and professionals.

The Galerie 5. patro opens with an exhibition called “Trouble Every Day”, presenting three Czech artists, whose common feature is the irony and the cartoon-like character of their works. This selling exhibition will continue till 21st April and the admission is free.

The gallery´s address is Myslikova 9, Prague 1. It is open from Wednesday to Friday between noon and 6 pm, on Saturdays between 11 am and 4 pm.