October 28, 2005 – January 15, 2006

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery in Prague – Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art
in the East wing of the 1st floor of Veletržní Palace,
Dukelských hrdinů 47, 170 00 Praha 7

Concept and curator of the exhibition: Tomáš Vlček
Architectural design: Stanislav Kolíbal
Graphic layout of printed materials: Stanislav Kolíbal

Main media partner: Hospodářské noviny
Partner: Adjust art
Partner of the Education Departments of NG programmes: HVB bank
Media partners: Art&antique, Classic FM, ČRo 3 Vltava, Praguebest

The Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the National Gallery in Prague prepared an exhibition of the life’s works of Karel Šlenger  (1903 – 1981). More than 50 drawings and 100 paintings are presented, mostly executed with the use of the artist’s own mixed oil and tempera techniques. For the first time, the National Gallery in Prague thus presents Šlenger’s works as a coherent ensemble, and their relations to the history of 20th-century art is pointed out.

The surprising and characteristic nature of Šlenger’s works was the cause why his name had long been connected with the east Bohemian region only. A change occurred in the course of the past decade when the interest in Šlenger increased in connection with the general concern for non-conformist works and tendencies in Czech modern art. The unusual expression of Šlenger’s paintings attracted attention, yet it did not provide any obvious key to the perception of his oeuvre as a significant contribution to the forming of Czech and European art of the 20th century.

The retrospective display of Šlenger’s works organised by the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the National Gallery in Prague encapsulates the views of the development and importance of this painter in the following thematic and chronological sections:

1. His own road to fine arts in the 1920s, mediated by his studies and destruction of the objectivistic view of the world represented by the European tradition based on the perspective vision.
2. The Thirties. Development of the possibilities of the painter’s expression following his emancipation from the schemes and conventions of modern art. Study trips to France, Algiers, and the Balkans proved very important for Šlenger, alongside his discoveries of the expression of material in the painting, and the values of personal experience of the world. In a rich variety of the possibilities of artistic expression, his preoccupation with the painting gesture was increasing, as was the effort to capture the essential life motifs and themes, among which the exclusive position was gradually taken up by the motif of the Earth and the subject of the female nude. In the intersecting of the two tendencies, visions were formed that combined the basic motifs of the body and the earth in a hymn-like whole.
3. The Forties brought substantial results in Šlenger’s endeavour to achieve his own painting expression. It was found at the turn of the 1930s, particularly in the impasted works and modelled paintings of female-nude motifs, and still lifes with flowers. The significant discoveries that placed Šlenger among the protagonists of the Art informel surpassed the framework of the Czechs’ ability to understand his works at that time, and the artist was thus made to look for more and more variations of his artistic expression. Among them, the most important ones featured the metamorphoses of the female body.
4. His works from the late 1940s to the end of the ‘50s strove for new ways, at which Šlenger arrived both on the basis of his Art informel discoveries and experience, and of the explorations of the instinctive aspects of human existence. Historical events of the 1940s and ‘50s affected Šlenger’s possibilities of asserting his own discoveries in the Czech and international contexts. As he could not gain space for his expression within the art production of the time, in which such an expression was missing, he started applying his personal visions to images aimed at society in general, on the period pictorial narrative and stylization. This adaptation to conventions backfired, and the artist turned increasingly sarcastic and critical of the time, the period art and himself, as well. In his branching production, chances for his talents to shine were only found occasionally, for example in his sets of fish, hares, ravens, and flowers.
5. It was only the more liberal climate that started in the late 1950s that enabled Šlenger to present himself in the public cultural life and at exhibitions again. The socialist realism had not ruined Šlenger’s creative profile and fate as much as was the case with many other artists, even if it considerably paralyzed the eruptive quality of Šlenger’s talents.
   The display arranged in the Československý spisovatel exhibition hall in 1959 encouraged him. In the 1960s and ‘70s his works mostly resulted in sarcastic visions of the human fate in modern times. In the various drawings and paintings executed in between his critical works, Šlenger mostly used and developed his own discoveries from the past decades.

Tomáš Vlček

Exhibition is accompanied by a catalog.

Entrance fee:
full: 80 CZK
reduced: 40 CZK
family: 120 CZK

Opening hours:
daily except Mondays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Contact for journalists:
Marcela Hančilová
Tel./ Fax:  224301167, e-mail: hancilova@ngprague.cz