The twenty-eighth work was selected by the screenwriter Andrea Sedláčková.

"Toyen is the Czech artist who is closest to me. I spent several years with this mysterious being – first I made the documentary “Toyen, Baron of Surrealism”, and I later wrote a biography of her, entitled “Toyen, the First Lady of Surrealism”. From your collections I’ve chosen a work from Toyen’s mature Artificialist period, the 1929 painting “Lake Landscape”. It captivates us with its colour and mystery. We can recognize a lake and a sandy beach, and perhaps a cave or a forest nearby. But we need to use our imagination – just as Toyen does, meaning that she is communicating directly with us. The painting was first exhibited in late February 1930 at the Aventinum gallery in Prague. The opening of the exhibition, featuring new works by Toyen and Štyrský, was brought to a close by the poet Vítězslav Nezval. Enchanted by the paintings, he grandly proclaimed: “Ladies and gentlemen! Look around you! How many rare sights there are! If I was rich, I would start the Štyrský and Toyen gallery – I would like to preserve this sight for everybody.” Eventually Nezval’s wish was partly fulfilled; he became the lucky owner of this canvas, which hung in his Prague apartment until his death. It was eventually taken down by his widow Fáfinka; in 1967 she sold it to the Central Bohemian Gallery, where it was displayed in Nelahozeves for many years before being acquired by the Ostrava gallery as part of a reorganization. Toyen liked the name of the painting so much that she used it again, for a different work, in 1931 – though that painting was not publicly exhibited for more than six decades. So it’s wonderful that this “sight” – the painting “Lake Landscape” no. 1 – is on display here in Ostrava where all lovers of Toyen’s art can enjoy it." (Andrea Sedláčková)

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