ALL POWER TO THE IMAGINATION!
Contemporary art from the Czech Republic
in dialogue with works of classical modern art
Imagination as a pictorial playfulness of the imagination can take many forms: it can create utopias or change reality; it can be anti-authoritarian and subversive. The French Surrealists before the Second World War already recognised this potential. Following their example, the “Surrealist Group” was founded in Czechoslovakia – an art movement that is still active today, and whose best-known representative is the filmmaker, poet, and artist Jan Švankmajer (b. 1934). Švankmajer is convinced that the imagination is a fundamental capacity, inherent in all human beings. His call for "All Power to the Imagination!", which he raised on the balcony of his house in the Hradčany district of Prague in the midst of the revolutionary events of 1989, aptly describes the imaginative-lyrical character of many contemporary Czech artists and has been taken as the overall title for the Czech Season of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.
The forms of expression found in modern and contemporary
art in East Central and Eastern Europe are very diverse. But where do these regional peculiarities come from? One of their most important sources are local artistic trends during the first decades of the twentieth century and, as a result, what we call visual memory: this is something we carry with us; we draw on it, often subconsciously; we build on it intellectually and bring it into the visual discourse as an argument.
Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, artists from
Bohemia sought inspiration in France. Many of them were drawn to Paris, where they became actively involved in the vibrant life of the art scene there. In this way, Prague became acquainted with the avant-garde movements of the metropolis on the Seine – from Expressionism and Cubism to Surrealism – subsequently giving rise to its own new and distinctive artistic currents.
Thanks to its rich multicultural past, its open political atmosphere, its economic prowess, and its progressive cultural events, Prague became a hotspot of free-thinking modern art in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. As in Paris, unique artistic movements emerged here, in particular Poetism, whose emergence is linked to the 1920s and the literary-artistic association "Devětsil", which a few years later influenced the development of Artificialism in Paris. The Czech artist Zdeněk Pešánek was the first to use cutting-edge technology, such as neon signs intended for commercial advertising, in his works of art. Today he is regarded as one of the world's pioneers of kinetic art.
The creative potential of the early twentieth century and the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic is still a source of inspiration for many contemporary artists today. Inspiration, however, does not mean epigonism: in selecting the contemporary works for this exhibition, the aim was to take as broad and enlightened a view as possible, to search for artistic affinities, to establish a mode of communication and thus create fragile visual dialogues with works of classical modernism. The inclusion of those works is therefore to be understood as constituting an independent historical excursion in its own right, as a time probe designed to help the visitor find his or her way through the rich and complex world of Czech contemporary art. At the same time, it is an attempt to do justice to the subtle and fluctuating threads of artistic connections and interrelationships between art then and now.