Jaroslava Severová (b. 1942) is a leading figure in the field of Czech graphics, although her body of work dating back to the 1960s encompasses a far broader scope that also includes painting, object art, the design of architectural elements and photography. Additionally, since the 1990s she has worked with computer graphics and digital printing. The exhibition at the gallery’s White Cube has been conceived as a “dialogue” between the artist’s early works from the GMU collections and her more recent creations.

The exhibition by Polish filmmaker, video artist and creator of photographs, installations and drawings Józef Robakowski (b. 1939) provides a glimpse into different aspects of his work, primarily from the 1960s to the 1990s. It also shows him in his role as an art collector, a member of various art groups and an organiser of exhibitions and other independent art activities. The exhibition includes films and photographs acquired by GMU in 2023, plus works on loan from the artist’s archives and from the National Museum in Wroclaw (Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu).

Jan Šerých (b. 1972) produces a highly diverse body of work. His abstract and minimalist art is often built on a technological foundation. A painter at first, he later – influenced by new media – began working with computers and the internet. Another integral aspect of his work is printing. Šerých works with found information that he pulls out of their timeless or virtual context – pictures, images from Google, information, data, symbols, codes and text. Many of these references have multiple meanings, and their meaning and humour deliberately produce a sense of disorientation in the viewer. When we look at Šerých’s works, we can usually decide whether we want to look at them or read them.

Ladislav Beneš (1883–1956) was one of the leading representatives of Czech neoclassicism in the first half of the 20th century. His works are a sophisticated synthesis of modernist and traditional elements. They reflect the fascination with speed, movement and technological progress that was typical for the interwar era. Automobiles, motorcycles and aeroplanes had become symbols of a new and dynamic world, and Beneš, as a member of the emerging generation of sculptors, was aware of these changes. Alongside his colleague Jan Štursa, with whom he shared a passion for the art of Auguste Rodin, he went in search of a new artistic style centred around the human figure that would also reflect this fascination with movement.

British artist Henry Moore (1898–1986) is considered a leading representative of modern sculpture whose work influenced individual artists as well as entire stylistic tendencies. Working with a detailed chronology, the exhibition explores the diplomatic framework and other mechanisms involved in the presentation and reception of Moore’s art during the Cold War. Mainly, however, it looks at his work’s influence on Czechoslovak sculpture in the second half of the 20th century.

The Cabinet of Curiosities section of the exhibition How to Collect Art: The Karel Tutsch Story introduces visitors to Karel Tutsch’s early collecting activities through a set of ex libris – a collection of small-scale applied graphic art. From here, Tutsch’s interests logically expanded to include fine art prints. Over time, the Cabinet of Curiosities will present various artists and their works on paper that form an indispensable part of the collection.

The concept of the historically focused collection exhibition How to Collect Art: the Karel Tutsch Story will be expanded by a series of exhibitions of the youngest generation of artists, current students or graduates from art school studios. In this way, the curators will revive Tutsch’s basic strategy of discovering and presenting the works of previously unknown artists in a new context. Gallery Na bidýlku II will thus become a laboratory for new approaches to the traditional medium of painting and installation, whose transformations Tutsch has followed and supported for several decades.

The use of cultural tools to criticise consumerism is as old as consumerism itself. Artistic critiques of capitalism date back to Germany’s socially engaged expressionism of the 1920s and 1930s known as New Objectivity. The progressive representatives of New Objectivity engaged in their first critiques of consumerism at a time of constant economic crisis and economic downturns, which eventually proved fatal to the Weimar Republic. New Objectivity was similarly adopted by Czechoslovak avant-garde artists with close ties to German culture, including the painters Adolf Hoffmeister, Antonín Pelc and Otakar Mrkvička. Sharp criticism of consumerism can also be found in the early slapstick films of Charlie Chaplin and, in Czechoslovakia, in the theatrical revues and film comedies of Voskovec and Werich and in other early films that, paradoxically, were a product of consumer culture. In the United States during the McCarthy era, pop art focused on the widespread consumerism that had sprung from the post-war economic boom, when the increased purchasing power of the middle and working classes resulted in increased consumption. Critiques of consumerism were of course present in all European social and artistic movements of the 1960s, including Viennese Actionism and Arte Povera, or the French New Wave and Italian neorealism in cinema.

One of the ways in which members of modern society express themselves is by collecting fine art. The cosmos of their burgeoning collection conveys their passions, pursuits, and opinions on what is good, high-quality, meaningful and beautiful. We can think of collection-building as an open and dynamic process with an unknown endpoint, because as the collection grows, so does the collector’s knowledge and experience, and the future of the collection is slowly reshaped.