14 June – 7 July 2018

open daily 10 AM to 6 PM or until the start of the evening festival programme

Castle Brewery, European Training Centre, Jiráskova 133, Litomyšl

vernissage  | 14 June at 6 PM

curator | David Železný

promoted by | Bohemian Heritage Fund and Cermak Eisenkraft

The members of the Czech interwar avant-garde were often involuntary pilgrims to all the corners of the world. Two totalitarian regimes, Nazi and communist, which afflicted our land after one another, scattered them to places to which they would voluntarily have never visited. Some of these journeys of Czech artists of the 20th century are already shrouded in legend. An example is the painful odyssey of Adolf Hoffmeister, Max Kopf, Alén Diviš and Antonín Pelc from the brutal Parisian prison of La Santé to the south of France, on the steamship Capitaine Paul Lemerle to Morocco and Martinique (some three hundred other European intellectuals, including among others André Breton and Wilfredo Lam, travelled with them). About other escapes general little is known. Also wild was the flight of the sculptor Bernard Reder, who thanks to the help of Aristid Maillol got to the USA via Spain, where however he was arrested and for a short period imprisoned. Exile affected all the presented artists. And of course their artistic expression. However not one of them lost faith in art and the desire to create.

David Železný, who conceived of the exhibition as an expert in many private collections at home and abroad, says of these wanderers:

“Perhaps because they were traveling and could not settle permanently in the context of Czech modern art, many of these artists now receive less attention today than they would deserve with regard to their artistic legacy.”

Exhibitions 2018       Exhibitions at this venue

Photographs: