Kunsthalle Prague will open a series of exhibitions on art collecting
The aim is to present various approaches to collecting on the examples of domestic and foreign private collections. It wants to answer questions about who collects what, what and why, what are the relations between collectors and artists or how private collections coexist with public ones. Offers insights into art collections that are rarely open to the public.
The first collector presented is Karel Babíček, curator, collector, merchant and founder of one of the first private galleries after the Velvet Revolution, the Prague Behémót Gallery, which operated from 1991 to 2003 and which, following the New York model, reflected current art across generations.
The exhibition at the Kunsthalle Prague covers Babíček’s activities in their entirety and dozens of works from the collector’s collection. The works of Adriena Šimotová, František Skála, Josef Žáček, Jiří Příhoda, Jaroslav Róna, Jiří David, Kateřina Vincourová, Krištof Kintera, Margita Titlová-Ylovsky, Václav Stratil, Vladimír Merta, Vladimír Kokolia and others can be seen. The Czech works at the exhibition also include works by a number of foreign artists, which Babíček presented as a gallerist in the exhibition program in the New Hall in Prague from 1995 to 1998. The exhibition will feature works by British sculptor Tony Cragg, American sculptor Nancy Davidson British artist Julian Opie or explicit photographs of controversial American film and photographer Larry Clark.
The exhibition is curated by Lenka Lindaurová, a critic and publicist who chose its name based on the famous novel Immortality of the Writer Milan Kundery from 1988. In it, one of the characters comments on the art world when she says that “midnight on the dial of European painting”. The curator thus marks the time gained in freedom and connection with the world, the creation of private galleries and collections, as well as the moment when the end of art history was announced.
Kunsthalle Prague is based in Prague’s Klárov and was built by The Pudil Family Foundation of Petra and Pavlína Pudilová. He has his own art, which focuses on modern, post-war and contemporary art. The Kunsthalle Prague opened to the public in February, with the organizers saying that 45,000 people visited the Kunsthalle in the first four months. The opening exhibition Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art has been extended to 29 August.