OPENING IN NATIONAL GALLERY

Exhibition Opening Route P6, P7
Text by:Národní Galerie Praha
Address:National Gallery Prague – Trade Fair Palace, Dukelských Hrdinů 47, Prague 1, Prague 7, 170 00

Opening and free entry to all exhibitions 21. 9. 2023, 19.00–22:00 

The opening ceremony of the festival will take place at 7:00 p.m. together with the National Gallery Prague’s Opening at the Trade Fair Palace, which this year will also house the festival’s center for professionals, the so-called Superstudio.

As part of the Opening, the NGP will be launching the new exhibition Watercolour between Prague and Vienna at the Trade Fair Palace as well as the exhibition HYPERTENSION23, which is part of Fotograf Festival #13. Visitors to Thursday’s Opening will also be able to view the recently introduced exhibitions of the NGP’s collections 1939–2021: The End of the Black-and-White Era and 1956–1989: Architecture for All as well as the permanent exhibitions 1918⁠–⁠1938: First Czechoslovak Republic and 1796⁠–⁠1918: Art of the Long Century. The NGP’s Opening will culminate in the performance Higher by Italian artist and choreographer Michele Rizzo, who will be presenting his work for the first time ever in Prague.

WATERCOLOUR BETWEEN PRAGUE AND VIENNA 

22. 9. 2023 – 7. 1. 2024 

Watercolor, i.e., working with water-diluted paints on paper, is a technique which stands on the borderline between drawing and painting and has a long tradition in the history of art. The exhibition presents watercolor in all its complexity: beyond the traditional fields (veduta, landscape, portraiture, interior depiction), the exhibition also focuses on other important themes, such as watercolor in the hands of women painters and watercolor sketching. The exhibition is not limited to the Biedermeier period, which is most often associated with watercolor, but traces the meaning and use of watercolor up to the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

CONCEPT AUTHOR: Petr Šámal 
CURATOR: Petra Kolářová 
ARTISTS: Jan Novopacký, František Kupka, Vojtěch Hynais, Bedřich Havránek, Thomas Ender, Josef Mánes, Rudolf Alt, Vincenc Morstadt, Amálie Mánesová, Louisa Berková a Hermína Laukotová 

FF#13:HYPERTENSION23 

22. 9. 2023 – 11. 2. 2024 

Fotograf Festival’s thirteenth edition is a visual novella that combines text and images. From this perspective, it explores the tension induced in our minds by technologies that constantly pressure us to notice, emotionally experience, or react. The project is searching for a new human identity, whose original form has been abstracted by the digital space, which reshaped the way we think about ourselves and being human. 

AUTHOR OF THE CONCEPT: Monika Čejková 
CURATOR: Monika Čejková
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Světlana Malinová 

1956–1989: ARCHITECTURE FOR ALL 

The exhibition focuses on architecture and lifestyle between 1956 and 1989 in Czechoslovakia. Lifestyle is a phenomenon in which everyday experiences intersect with architecture and design as creative disciplines. The exhibition presents important works by authors such as V. Aulický, V. and V. Machoninovi, F. Cubr, K. Prager, A. Šrámková; creative collectives such as Sial Liberec and others, along with films from the National Film Archive and period publications. 

CURATOR: Helena Huber-Doudová

1939–2021: THE END OF THE BLACK-AND-WHITE ERA 

The permanent exhibition presents art as testimony of the times: the result of not only purely authorial but also social, political, and economic forces. It consists of more than 300 works solely from the collection of the NGP without any loans. It offers a methodology that is not based on a hierarchical selection of the very best art, but on an attempt to understand the motives behind what art was being made at the time and why. The aim is to show that art has always included multiple and parallel conceptions of artistic quality.

CURATORS: Michal Novotný, Eva Skopalová, Adéla Janíčková