Finally, news from the Czech museum landscape, which has been shaken by scandals, corruption and cost-cutting measures, that gives hope.
The “Praha Art Hall” was opened in Prague.
In a prominent place just below the Hradcany and in the immediate vicinity of the government building.
It is not really an art gallery, as it is a private initiative.
Also, it is not only intended as an exhibition hall, it has a considerable collection.
The Kunsthalle was founded by the couple Pavlina and Peter Pudil, who amassed a considerable fortune in the wild 1990s.
The Pudils deliberately chose a name for their private museum that consists of a German name and the Czech name for Prague, in order to tie in with the centuries-long coexistence of the Czech and German-speaking population in this city.
The "Kunsthalle Praha" is located in a substation of the Prague electricity company that was built in the 1930s and was extensively renovated and equipped with exhibition rooms, a library, a bar and terraces that offer a wonderful view of the city.
First came photography and cinematography
Since the art gallery is located in a former substation, it made sense to open it with an exhibition on the subject of electricity.
One of the best connoisseurs of media art caused by electricity, the director of the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Peter Weibel, was invited to curate the exhibition.
For Weibel, alongside the steam engine, it was above all electricity that radically changed the perception of movement – through cars and airplanes – and of light – until then there was only natural light – during the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century.
But initially it was not the visual arts but photography and cinematography that had embraced this change.
Only later, influenced by the experiments of photography and cinematography,
movement and light also became a theme for cubist and futurist artists, for example.
Showing this development is the aim of Weibel's exhibition entitled "Kinetism: 100 Years of Electricity in Art".
In his view that it was photography and cinematography that first experimented with light and movement and were only influenced by them and much later by the fine arts, Weibel finds himself confirmed by the Czech artist and theorist Zdeněk Pešánek, who unfortunately is almost unknown internationally. who published the book “Kinetism – Kinetics in Fine Art – Music in Colors” in 1941.
For Weibel the very first book on kinetics in art, which unfortunately remained unknown because it was written in Czech.
Only now, eighty years later, has Pešánek's book been made available to a broader public in an English translation.
Revolutionary changes?
At its core, the entire exhibition is centered around the work of this prophetic artist and theorist.
Because it was none other than Pešánek who was asked to design artwork for the facade of the original substation.
In 1932 he designed four sculptures made of plastic, wood, steel and wire, each more than a meter high and painted with luminescent paints.
But they were never attached to the facade.
Only photos and small models that can be seen in the exhibition have remained.
Also on display is the 1936 sculpture The Male and Female Torso, which was exhibited at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition of Art and Technology in Modern Life.
Like the designs for the façade, the neon-colored torso consists of materials that were completely unusual for a work of art at the time;
made of synthetic resin, glowing neon tubes, light bulbs, artificial stone and metal.
For Weibel, this torso by Pešánek is the very first neon sculpture in art history.
This neon sculpture is flanked by iconic works of kinetic and cinematographic art.
From Naum Gabo's metal rod created in 1919/20, which, driven by an electric motor, rotates around its own axis, bears the title "Kinetic Construction" and is the very first kinetic work of art.
From Marcel Duchamp's 1926 Anémic cinéma and the 1935 Rotorelief, which is a superimposition of the mechanical rotation of a circle with the cinematographic illusion of rotary movement, and from the 1930 cinematic experiment "Lichtspiel Schwarz-Weiss-Grau" by the Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy.
It is worth visiting this exhibition just to see these works that made art history, not to mention the later works of Woody Vašulka, Gyula Kosice,
During his opening speech, Peter Pudil, the founder of the Kunsthalle, referred to the vision of Czech President Václav Havel, who died in 2011.
On his vision of Prague, which is in the middle of Europe, as a crossroads of different European cultures and languages.
According to Pudil, the newly founded Kunsthalle Praha has set itself the goal of realizing this vision.
A truly high goal for a rather small private institution.
However, as we know from history, it is often not the large institutions that stimulate revolutionary change, but rather the small ones.
kineticism. 100 years of electricity in art.
In the Art Hall in Prague;
until June 20th.
The catalog costs 44 euros.