The opening will take place on Tuesday 13 January at 5 p.m.

free of charge

This exhibition is a cross-section of the gallery’s collections, presenting works by more than 80 artists created before 1926, when the gallery’s new building was opened. The intertwining groups within the exhibition blend famous names with artists who are now forgotten, works that shaped Czech modern art with works that remain on its margins. This concept creates an internally coherent whole consisting of thematically distinct parts – beginning with František Kupka’s famous meditation on the meaning and fate of humanity inspired by the Emerald Tablet, and ending with Josef Šíma’s groundbreaking drawing featuring the motif of yin and yang that expresses the unity of opposites. The exhibition comprises more than twenty separate sections, all of which reveal the gallery’s collection in a new light. Sharp contrasts emerge between different stylistic and programmatic approaches, between solitary artists and generational groupings. The individual sections represent core themes, regardless of the artists’ historical or ideological context, with themes including the elements, the sea, paradise, states of mind, nature both free and appropriated, fairy-tales, mythical parables, and important moments in history.

The exhibition places emphasis on gender issues, male and female nudes, work tasks, portraits of loved ones, and self-portraits manifesting a convergence of various modes of expression. The synchronous, multi-layered Secession era gave way to the diachronic focus of the avant-garde. Self-reflection represented a path to the foundations on which modern art was built. The turning-point came with the emergence of Expressionism, represented in the group known as The Eight, which soon gave way to the spiritual structures of Cubism in works by members of the Group of Visual Artists as well as those who stood outside the group. These two periods, which came in short succession, laid the foundations for the emergence of post-war modern art, which was vehemently opposed by the younger generation of artists who came to prominence after the First World War. The broad spectrum of conflicting attitudes, with opposing views on the same subjects, created a dynamic tension manifested in the dramatic ruptures which characterized the period from the 1890s to the 1920s, when Ostrava’s new gallery building was opened.