Taking in Art

7/18/2018

National Gallery at Narodni Palace

"Grimace of the Century" Jiri Kolar

We had a chance to see the The Grimace of the Century, a showing of Jiri Kolar's collages and mixed media at the National Gallery at the Kinsky Palace. Yet again, I am overwhelmed by the amount of suffering that took place during WW II for people in Prague and the whole region continuing into the Community regime that followed. Kolar's pictorial accounting of the psychic stress and humanistic discombobulation was potent in the selected images shown. On top of that, I loved the mastery of the collage medium that Kolar and other artists employed. The pieces were really done well, and I picked up some techniques that I would like to explore in collage and possibly chine collet printmaking. The images below don't do it justice,, so I would go to the link above for better images and a more poignant description of the show.

Exhibition Palace

THE END OF THE GOLDEN CENTURY

Chris and I toodled over to the Exhibition Palace, another branch of the National Gallery in Prague to take in:

THE END OF THE GOLDEN CENTURY
Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and the Viennese modernism in the collections of the National Gallery in Prague

(from the National Gallery website)
The year 2018 will mark the 100th anniversary of death of two major artists of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries – Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – Feb. 6, 1918)and Egon Schiele (June 12, 1890 – Oct. 31, 1918). The collections of the National Gallery in Prague house the key works by the two artists – the paintings The Virgin and Water Castle by Klimt and the Pregnant Woman and Death, Still Life with Flowers, Dead City and drawings Seated Nude and Seated Woman with Bent Knees by Schiele. The new display in the permanent exhibition on the fourth floor of the Veletržní Palace will show Klimt’s influence on Schiele and a history of acquisitions of individual artworks, but it will also put them in a context of the work by their well-known and half-forgotten contemporaries and followers on the Viennese art scene, such as Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956), Emil Orlik (1870–1932), Alfred Kubin (1877–1959), Carl Otto Czeschka (1878–1960), Richard Teschner (1879–1948), Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) and Max Oppenheimer (1885– 1954).
Curators: Otto M. Urban, Zuzana Novotná, Olga Uhrová and Petr Šámal

We both loved the show. I was wowed by seeing Klimt's The Virgin in real life, and also Egon Schiele's Seated Woman with Bent Knees. I also loved Richard Teschner's accomplished drawings and paintings of fantastical creatures interspersed into human life, which pre-dates the Star Wars characters by over a century. Chris was very impressed by Alfred Kubin's macabre, but highly creative thematic etchings, amongst others. Gallery link above.

Permanent Collections at Exhibition Palace

Afterwards, we walked over to the permanent collections and enjoyed seeing works by some of the Czech Republic's well-known artists such as Mucha, Svabinsky and Jacob Schikaneder. Jacob Schikaneder was a master of painting twilight, night and moon scenes. I loved his work and incredible handling of light! .