Within Reach. Czech art of the 19th and 20th centuries from the collection of the Regional Art Gallery in Zlin

Zlin with a return visit in Bielsko-Biała - jewels of contemporary Czech painting in Galeria Bielska BWA.
An important exhibition in the programme of the Festival of Czech Art in Bielsko-Biała.

Project co-financed by the European Union from the European Regional Development Fund under the INTERREG V-A Program Czech Republic-Poland 2014-2020 and from the state budget of the Republic of Poland

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The Art Gallery in Zlín, like almost every public Czech gallery maintained by the local government, promotes art by organizing exhibitions and artistic events, as well as by educational and publishing activities. In contrast to Poland, where the somewhat similar galleries of the former BWA  (Art Exhibition Bureaus) network deal exclusively with contemporary art, Czech galleries also function as regional museums, gathering and displaying collections of earlier art, mainly from the 19th and 20th centuries.

In September and October 2018, a part of the Zlin collection will be presented at Galeria Bielska BWA in Bielsko-Biała. The local Regional Gallery of Art (Krajské galerie výtvarného umění) houses work by prominent Czech and Slovak artists, dozens of paintings, prints and sculptures, representing various trends such as cubism, surrealism, symbolism, abstraction, visual poetry, conceptualism - all these will be presented in Bielsko-Biała.

It is worth noting that the Zlin is a city which owes its present prosperity to the pre-war factory Bata, not only producing footwear, but also promoting modernity and modernism in design and architecture.

In 2017, the gallery in Zlín hosted the exhibition Through the Looking Glass / Na druhé straně zrcadla, presenting paintings of the 21st century from the Art Collection of Galeria Bielska BWA. The newly prepared exhibition serves to return the favour.

                                                                       Agata Smalcerz, director of Galeria Bielska BWA

 
“The exhibition presents a wide selection of the most important works of art from the rich collection of the Regional Art Gallery in Zlín. These are mainly paintings and sculptures by key figures of the Czech art scene from the late 19th century to the 1960s. Instead of focusing on a few dominant currents, the exhibition concentrates on the most valuable works that relate to different themes and time periods of the collection.

The composition of the exhibition is based on selected works from the 19th-century collection - from works by the leading figures of the so-called generations of founders of Czech modern art, through surrealists, to representatives of other tendencies in interwar art, including painters whose expression reflects the tension and drama of the late 1930s and '40s. The exhibition is complemented by artwork from the 1960s when Czech art experienced one of its peak periods.” 

Pavlína Pyšná – curator of the exhibition

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