The Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové
Authority: The Hradec Králové Region
Director: PhDr. Tomáš Rybička
History:
The Gallery of Modern Art was founded in 1953 as a regional gallery with its temporary home in the chateau at Rychnov nad Kněžnou. In 1963 it moved to the Baroque style residence of the bishop in Hradec Králové. In 1990 the Art Nouveau building, formerly known as the Credit and Savings Bank was made available for the use of the gallery (architect O. Polívka, sculptural decorations of the portal by L. Šaloun), where it is to this day. The Gallery remains true to the tradition that began in 1901 with the setting up of a fund for the building of a local gallery; in 1919 bishop Doubrava donated 100 paintings to the municipality In 1936 a municipal picture gallery was installed at the old Town Hall, substituting for the municipal gallery, designed by Josef Gočár in 1931-1933, but which was never built.
Collection:
The gallery collections are extremely rich and provide a good cross-section of 20th-century Czech art. Represented are all significant trends in Czech visual art that were involved in the shaping of modern and contemporary art, starting with Art Nouveau and the group Osma (Eight). Particularly well represented is imaginative art from the period between the two world wars, while from the post-war period there are chiefly works by artists belonging to the trends of the 1960s – abstract and informal art as well as work by contemporary artists.
Statement:
I am very much aware of the thorniness (at this late date!) of using words like “detached” or “objective” in relation to an institution’s work or attitude about the Czech cultural conditions. I’ve often attempted to plough through people’s protests about the vulgarity of an institution’s non-involvement in its practice and work, supposedly implied in the use of such terms. However, that is not at all what those words mean to me; on the contrary – I think that a greater total involvement in one’s work is possible when one attempts to be objective than when one does not. I have found that the limitations imposed by decisions based on my personal “tastes” are absolutely stifling. Choices made through the criteria of subjective likes and dislikes are to me nothing more than a kind of therapeutic ego-tiilliation that only inhibit further the possibility of sharing an artistic, or curatorial vision (as if it weren’t difficult enough a thing to do as it is).
Besides, I really believe that truly good curatorial efforts and exhibitions is always made of broader stuff than the personality of the director. Think of all the hangups Chalupecky had that he managed transcend in his work! I don’t mean to imply that great thinkers of the past necessarily knew and consciously strove for this kind of objectivity – I don’t presume to know whether they did or not – but I think that the mere fact that their work’s ability to affect us on any level is an indication that they attained and shared this breath of vision. The new terminology–”cool, “rational, “reductive” in art – simply corroborates my opinion that the necessity for this transcendence of subjectivity has been recognized, and that attempts are being made to facilitate the process. To me, people who complain about the “anti-humanism” of for example conceptual art, are missing the point. Any kind of objectivity – whether it is in the formulation of a concretized system, a rational decision-making method, conceptual clarity – can serve only to facilitate the final emergence, in as pure a form as possible, of the curatorial idea, which is almost always basically intuitive in nature. It is only when one subordinates the original intuition to the subjective distillations and limitations of one’s own personality that one need be finally confronted with a kind of mirror image of one’s egoistical conflicts as an end product.
I think that the best thing a director can do for his creative development is allow his intuitions as full an actualization as possible – unhampered by ultimately unavoidable limitations of personality and material. I have found that the best way for me to deal with my own subjective limitations is in the process of conceptual formulation. Only the intuitive is truly unlimited. I see all art as basically an intuitive process, regardless of how obliquely it has been dealt with in the past. Within this context, I think “conceptual art” is the most adequate way of liberating the creative process so that the cultural producers may approach and realize their work – and themselves – on the purest possible level.