The seventeenth work was selected by artist Jiří Petrbok.

"I have discovered enough paintings, sculptures and drawings in the GVUO collection that I would like to propose for exhibition. For example, just after the "winning painting" I was considering things by Helena Salichová, Karel Holan, Otakar Kubin, Jan Preisler and X other artists. By a sort of elimination method, I have finally selected the painting The Knight from the Fairy Tale by Maxmilián Pirner...

Why so? To be honest, I don't even have a rational explanation. Maybe because as a child I liked to draw and it was the paintings (illustrations) by Maxmilián Pirner, Arthur Scheiner or Josef Lada that I liked the most. I still find their subliminal influence from that time in my paintings today. And I also notice that in today's art scene, there are often things full of symbolic, visual images, even if in the "cover" of the present, so this picture is actually quite contemporary... "

Jiří Petrbok

The series of single-work exhibitions will continue until the completion of the Gallery’s new extension, designed by the architect Josef Pleskot, which will be evocatively named The White Shadow. The exhibitions aim to raise public awareness of the Gallery’s extensive collections, which currently cannot be exhibited in their entirety due to a lack of space. The project will also present our collection as a living organism, constantly growing and evolving.

Besides raising awareness of the Gallery’s collections, these single-work exhibitions will also play a key role in generating the visual style of the Gallery’s promotional materials. Based on the work currently displayed, the graphic design team will create a colour scheme that will feature on quarterly or monthly programmes, leaflets and other materials.

The curators of the single-work exhibitions will change like the works themselves. Instead of art historians, the curators will be drawn from a wide range of other creative professions – artists themselves, writers, actors and directors, architects, scientists and scholars, musicians, restorers, and more. Their artistic sensitivity and inventive approach will make them ideal ‘guest curators’ for this series. Each curator will prepare a talk, a reading or a different type of presentation to explain why they have chosen their particular work. The curators have a completely free choice – they can select works from any period and in any medium, so the exhibitions will feature a huge variety, ranging from 19th-century painting and drawing to contemporary photography.

Robert V. Novák and Zuzana Burgrová