New Graphic Cabinet of the Collection of Prints and Drawings in St George's Convent

March 16 - June 13, 2010

Women and art - a pairing of words that long meant only women as the subject of art. In the Czech lands, women assumed an active role in art in the nineteenth century. Contemporary opportunities meant women's art focused on painting and drawing, but interest in graphic techniques also existed. However, the position of graphic art in the spectrum of professions open to women had two poles - while it was not contradictory to the idea that detail work was suitable for women, mastery of the necessary techniques required specialized skills that were usually difficult to acquire. Nevertheless, women engaged in graphic art from its very beginnings.

The National Gallery in Prague offers a wide cross-section of 19th-century women's graphic art in Bohemia from among the artworks in its Collection of Prints and Drawings. The exhibition opens with artwork by aristocratic women who were the first to receive a good art education. Their activities in art, including graphic art, played a role in society's recognition of women as artists.

The first professional women artists found themselves in a different situation than their aristocratic counterparts, often taking an untrodden path that offered nothing but an uncertain livelihood and frequently forced them to relinquish the traditional role of wife and mother. The exhibition looks at the activities of widows who took over the copper-engraving workshops of their late husbands. In the second half of the 19th century, women graphic artists began to produce fashion pictures and embroidering patterns in ladies' magazines. This period brought the first women's schools offering classes in graphic techniques, particularly woodcut. Owing to this education, women found jobs in book and picture magazine illustration as early as the 1870s, making a name for themselves at home and abroad. The Cabinet also presents the artwork of Zdenka Braunerová's contemporaries, whose activities significantly helped invigorate the graphic art genre in Bohemia.

Petr Šamal
Curator
Collection of Prints and Drawings

Chamber exhibitions organized by the Collection of Prints and Drawings are part of the National Gallery in Prague's permanent exhibitions. ith the exception of regular free-of-charge admission times (the first Wednesday of every month from 3 to 8 p.m.), visitors pay an admission fee for the entire exhibition Nineteenth-Century Art in Bohemia with the option of an individual tour:

Admission fee: 150 CZK / basic fee
80 CZK/ reduced fee
200 CZK/ family fee

A reduced fee is charged after 4 p.m.: 80/ 40/ 100 CZK, respectively.
Opening hours: daily except Mondays from 10 a.m. till 6 p.m.

Press release of March 2, 2010

Address:
The National Gallery in Prague, Collection of 19th-century Art - Convent of St George at Prague Castle, nám. U Sv. Jiří 33, Praha 1

Contact for journalists: Petra Jungwirthová, National Gallery in Prague spokeswoman
Phone: +420 222 32 14 59, cell: +420 606 166 513 ; e-mail: jungwirthova@ngprague.cz