Press Release / February 19, 2015
Oskar Kokoschka returns to Prague
The National Gallery exhibits the artist’s interwar works
From February 20, 2015, Veletržní Palace hosts the exhibition Oskar Kokoschka and Prague, showcasing works by Oskar Kokoschka on loan from Czech and foreign institutions and private collections, created during the artist’s stay in Czechoslovakiafrom 1934 to 1938. The exhibition is the result of the collaborative endeavor of the Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg and the National Gallery in Prague.
Oskar Kokoschka (1886 Pöchlarn – 1980 Montreux), one of the most important artists of the 20th century, arrived in Prague on September 25, 1934, accompanied by Edith Sachsl, a Viennese fashion magazine illustrator. His four-year sojourn in Czechoslovakia during the interwar period was amomentous turning point in his life. Contrary to other artists from Germany and Austria, Kokoschka was not an émigré fleeing Nazism, and his personal and professional opportunities considerably differed, as well. Originally he had planned but a brief stopover in Prague, to paint a portrait of President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, on his way to Russia and East Asia. Due to the president’s deteriorating heath and the international political development, he remained in Czechoslovakia much longer – a fact that greatly influenced his private life and oeuvre.
The exhibition and accompanying catalogue, made possible through the National Gallery’s collaboration with the Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg, explore Kokoschka’s contacts with Czech- and German-speaking artists on the Czechoslovak cultural scene of the time and his role as a renowned public figure, who also inspired Czechoslovak artists in many ways.The exhibition will offer the most comprehensive overview yet of his impact on the anti-Fascist immigrants in Czechoslovakia. The activities of the Oskar-Kokoschka-Bund group and interrelations with the avant-garde Liberated Theater of Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich will also be examined for the very first time.
A representative selection of Kokoschka’s “Prague” work is exhibited in the context of Czech art, reflecting his collaboration with Dr. Hugo Feigl’s gallery and the Mánes Artists’ Society. Among the artists are Friedrich Feigl, Bohdan Heřmanský, Willi Nowak, Karel Vogel, Vincenc Makovský, Emil Filla, František Janoušek and Josef Čapek, as well as exiled artists in Czechoslovakia such as John Heartfield, Theo Balden, Kurt Lade and Johannes Wüsten.
February 20 – June 28, 2015
The National Gallery in Prague, Veletržní Palace
Exhibition concept: Agnes Tieze
Curators: Bronislava Rokytová and Olga Uhrová
General partner of NG
Komerční banka
Media partners of NG
Česká televize, Český rozhlas, Hospodářské noviny, Aktuálně.cz, Prague Events Calendar, Anopress IT
Contacts
Národní galerie vPraze
Staroměstské náměstí 12, 110 15 Praha 1
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Contact for the media
Šárka Pleslová
+420606910 743