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Many major exhibition projects were undertaken in 2008. Between January and December, the National Gallery in Prague presented a number of significant loans from galleries abroad (e.g. an international collection of historical photographs), while providing many of its own artworks to foreign exhibitions in reciprocity. Almost 30 exhibitions were held in 2008. A National Gallery priority is to operate as an open institution, mediating exposure to art figures and lesser-known artworks, which could not be presented due to the oppressive totalitarian regime, for Czech and foreign visitors. A new exhibition on the third and fourth floors of the Veletržní Palace represents a major collection design change. The fourth floor now houses works of art from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including a large presentation of František Kupka's work. The third floor shows masterpieces of Czech cubism and social art.

In a way, the new exhibition of Czech art is a turning point, presenting a new view of turn-of-the-century Czech art and helping to facilitate new ways of looking at the era with which the Czech nation has seemed to identify most.

A word from the authors

"As early as the Middle Ages, Bohemia was a crossroads of original opinions and trends that always led to outstanding artistic achievements. In Gothic art, this culminated in the constructions of Matthias Arras and Petr Parléř, the paintings of the Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece and Master Theodoric and the beautiful Madonna style of sculpture. The high quality of mediaeval art in Bohemia was affirmed by the Baroque, when a combination of foreign influences gave rise to an original and unprecedented form of Baroque exclusive to Bohemia.

In full awareness of these traditions - later followed by nineteenth-century art and acknowledged by Czech modernism - we have designed the current exhibition as a tribute to Czech attitudes. We present the artworks as a set of collections of individual artists showing the high quality and broad-mindedness of late-nineteenth-century Czech painting as well as the boldness and progressiveness of the ascent of twentieth century art. The exhibition presents a large collection of František Kupka's artworks designed as a permanent display of his greatest achievements. Although it often goes unmentioned, the National Gallery in Prague has the best and largest collection of Kupka's work in the world. This is fitting, however, as Kupka was above all a Czech artist.

After the great - and almost heroic - cubist period, which grew to influence lifestyle like nowhere else in the world, the exhibition's high point is a collection of social art showing, to an unprecedented degree, the great power (especially in sculpture) of this as yet neglected area of Czech art. In the early twentieth century, the world was engulfed - and the future was to be dictated - by the First World War. We have therefore included weapons as examples of design that is at once rational and merciless yet beautiful.

Architectural design opened the wings of the Veletržní Palace up to large compartments highlighting the monumental character of the artworks and playing a major role in the exhibition.

Colour also plays an important role, rounding out the atmosphere of the exhibition halls, paraphrasing the contemporary climate and enhancing the artworks' own colours.

The global economic crisis has forced us to downsize several local projects, especially exhibitions. We have filled the Veletržní Palace premises that served to house such displays with permanent exhibitions of contemporary art. In the last ten years, the National Gallery in Prague has built the largest contemporary art exhibition in the Czech Republic, comprising artworks produced in all media ranging from the traditional to the electronic. The fifth floor will house an exhibition of contemporary sculpture and the mezzanine gallery Czech painting after 1995. Visitors will thus have the opportunity to gain an overview of current art trends.

The spectacular book One Hundred and Fifty-Five Twentieth-Century Artworks in the Collections of the National Gallery in Prague has been published in five languages on the occasion of the exhibition's opening. It offers a concise view of art of the period as seen through the National Gallery collection. This rare book will be also published in paperback in several languages. In a nutshell, it shows the richness and varied character of the National Gallery's collections and the top achievements of Czech art during the given period and underlines how, despite the dictatorial restrictions imposed on the National Gallery in the second half of the twentieth century by the Communist totalitarian regime, its staff managed to amass a collection that can compare with any other in the world's museums."

Exhibition authors: Milan Knížák, Tomáš Vlček

The spectacular book One Hundred and Fifty-Five Twentieth-Century Artworks in the Collections of the National Gallery in Prague has been published in five languages on the occasion of the permanent exhibitions' re-opening.

Milan Knížák and Tomáš Vlček are its authors.

155 reproductions, large size, text in Czech, English, French, German and Italian, 336 pages.
For details about the book, see the Press Release Appendix We are pleased to present a new book.

The National Gallery in Prague - Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art
Dukelských hrdinů 47, Prague 7

Tickets admit the holder to the entire permanent exhibition of 20th- and 21st-Century Art in the Veletržní Palace

Admission fee: 160 CZK
Reduced fee: 80 CZK
Family admission: 200 CZK
Reduced fee applicable after 4 o'clock p.m.

Open daily except Mondays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

www.ngprague.cz

Journalist contact: Petra Jungwirthová, National Gallery in Prague spokeswoman
cell: 420 2 606 166 513, e-mail: jungwirthova@ngprague.cz

We are pleased to present a new book...

One Hundred and Fifty-Five Twentieth-Century Artworks in the Collections of the National Gallery in Prague

Graphic layout: Filip Heyduk and Martin Strnad

Text in Czech, English, French, German and Italian, 336 pages,

155 reproductions, large size

The book presents 155 twentieth-century artworks representative of the National Gallery in Prague's collections. Its authors tell a tale with many plot lines, but the book is typified by a certain refinement that permeates the gallery collections. It is ample evidence of the rare character and size of a modern art collection comprising a host of unexpected artworks, a collection that above all refuses to emulate "mainstream" ideas. Offering a contemporary point of view, it uncovers new artists and new attitudes, doing so in the spirit of tradition and in reference to collections of previous centuries that also highlight authenticity and intimacy rather than gesture. Twentieth-century art comprises many trends and tendencies, which made it impossible to present the artworks chronologically. The authors chose what might be called "digests" that explain the character of the collections - and recent Czech history - in more interesting and complex ways. The last part of the book is dedicated to young artists who have already won certain acclaim on the Czech and international art scenes.

Early twentieth-century art is represented by generally acclaimed world masterpieces. The book thus shows that our predecessors consistently and courageously sought out the European avant-garde and reveals the wisdom of the Czechoslovak government between the two world wars, which twice facilitated special purchases of major works of European modern art. There were also many outstanding collectors in Czechoslovakia, whose collections later went to the National Gallery.

World War II put an end to the National Gallery's golden age. The Communist totalitarian regime that followed prevented any international cooperation with museums on equal terms and prohibited the collecting of "bourgeois" art. The situation improved in the second half of the 1960s during the all too brief Prague Spring, unfortunately only in political, not economic terms and only insignificant art purchases were made at the time. Czech art after 1945, produced in very constrained political circumstances, was insufficiently explored. Some artists were neglected by the regime and anti-regime elements alike and their absence in the National Gallery's collections was a major drawback.

After 1989, many international artists sought to cooperate with or donate their artworks to the National Gallery, and there were other possibilities to enrich its collections. Conflicting opinions and administrative problems, however, made it impossible to exploit these opportunities.

The situation did not change until the second half of 1999, when the National Gallery was reorganized and the existing gaps in its collections were systematically filled. Nevertheless, the prices of some artworks were so high by that time that is was impossible to buy them. The National Gallery therefore initiated targeted purchases of the "youngest" art to assemble a comprehensive collection of contemporary art trends, especially in the Czech milieu. Faithful to its tradition, the National Gallery in Prague focuses on inconspicuous works of a meditative nature, expressing their artists' more intimate side.