The end of the Habsburg Monarchy and the rise of an independent Czechoslovak state played a key role in the establishing of international contacts by the Czech avant‑garde. Unlike most of the inter‑war European avant‑garde movements where contacts with their Czech counterparts were rather sparse, communication between Czech and French artists was quite extensive. It could be credited for the most part to Josef Šíma. »
Does modernity, whose contradictions accumulate in the war, is inevitably destructive? The exhibition does not give a definitive answer to this question, but presenting the First World War as a clash of various, often contradictory forces, interests and ideas – sometimes modernization, sometimes traditional – aims to create a space in which it resounds and, above all, to open the field to reflection on the nature of modernity changed by war.
With the founding of the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau in 1898, Dresden became an important centre of the international Arts and Crafts Movement. The opening of the Deutsche Werkstätten to women as artistic collaborators at the beginning of the 20th century was virtually unknown until today. »
An exhibition of unique photographs by the outstanding American photographer Chuck Fishman, documenting the life of the Jewish community in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s, and nowadays. In his photographs, Fishman set out to capture the final chapter in the history of Polish Jewry. Fishman sought to perpetuate the memory of a community that he was sure was disappearing before his very eyes. He worked mainly in large cities, formerly important Jewish centres, where Jewish life somehow still “smouldered”.
Tychy is a unique city – created according to a coherent concept in just a few decades. From the perspective of the authorities, there was no place for the church in the newly created reality, which essentially contradicted the needs of the forming community. Over the next decades, small communities cemented by energetic clerics achieved their goals despite numerous obstacles, effectively using all the moments of political fluctuations. The exhibition will feature a dozen or so churches designed during the great city construction (1951–1989) and pre‑existing buildings that have become part of its expanding borders.
Democracy and diversity. Launched in November 1918 during the revolution in Berlin, the association of artists known as the Novembergruppe quickly became an influential and innovative player in the art world and public arena of the Weimar Republic. With its pluralist philosophy, the association was open to every style in the visual arts, but also to architects, writers, composers, and filmmakers.
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Erwin Wurm has long numbered among the global stars of contemporary art. His drawings from recent years – drawings that exhibit great thematic and technical diversity – are the focus of an exhibition at the Albertina Museum. Erwin Wurm takes time to draw nearly every day. These drawings represent reflections and commentaries on the world and serve to record the artist’s ideas, thus encompassing his entire creative cosmos. »
In January 2017 the collectors Gertraud and Dieter Bogner gave a very special gift to mumok – approximately thirty works by the Austrian‑American architect, artist, stage designer, designer, and theorist Friedrich Kiesler. One of Kiesler’s major works, Endless House (1950), will now go on permanent show at mumok, along with a number of further works. »
The end of World War I brought freedom to many nations of Central Europe, while for others it meant profound changes in their political and economic life. In the following decades war destruction, shifting borders and confrontation with the new post-war political reality made a profound impact on the development of culture and the shape of architecture in this part of Europe. »
More than thirty paintings and other works by Frieda Kahlo are being brought on loan to Budapest. The selection – which not only features the artist’s hallmark self‑portraits, but also includes such major works as her very first canvas, painted in 1927, as well as paintings and portraits inspired by the events in her life, works suffused with symbolism, drawings, and even photographs – offers a glimpse inside the inner world of Frida Kahlo, and shows us the mythical reality that she experienced and recreated. »
