2024-08-27 18:26:06
The symbolist painting The Fusion of Souls by Max Švabinský could not possibly have a more contrasting counterpart. At the exhibition called Husa na Kampě, a certain saint by Mikuláš Medek hangs next to the canvas. The collector and former first director of TV Nova Vladimír Železný introduces a selection from his gallery’s collection with these works. It can be seen in Prague’s Kampa Museum until next Sunday, September 8.
Vladimír Železný started collecting art 25 years ago. The show thus celebrates a quarter of a century, during which the works managed by his Zlatá husa Gallery formed one of the most important Czech private collections. She is particularly strong in two areas – Czech modernism and the 1960s.
Max Švabinský: Fusion of souls, 1901, oil on canvas. | Photo: Museum Kampa
When Železný bought a famous and important canvas by Max Švabinský at last year’s Prague auction, it enabled the exceptional opening of the exhibition “digest” of the entire collection. “If we are looking for one specific work that begins Czech modern art, Fusion of Souls is one of the most suitable candidates for this title,” writes Jan Skřivánek, chief curator of Museo Kampa, in the exhibition catalog.
The painting, whose motif Švabinský repeated on canvas and paper for several years, depicts a couple in love. It sounds disturbing. A girl in a white dress embraces a seated young man who stares impassively in front of him as if in a trance. The woman presses her lover’s head to her chest and covers him with her long hair, wraps him, perhaps even ties him up. The man is apparently wearing a religious robe. The painter described the figure as his mental portrait.
The Merging of Souls in the Železný collection dates from 1901, when Švabinský was studying in his last year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, he was 27 years old. He died at a respectable age six decades later, when another Czech painter and Železný’s favorite, Mikuláš Medek, was already creating so-called informal canvases. The one called Some Saint comes from 1966. Also disturbing, somehow very sharp and deep at the same time, the image resembles a prehistoric, ritual instrument intended for worship rather than a figure.
The paintings of Medek and Švabinský are the first thing that a visitor to the exhibition catches their eye. Such is the intention: to show the dramatic transformation of Czech painting, which took place practically in the time of one human life.
Viktor Oliva: Absinthe Drinker, 1901, oil on cardboard. | Photo: Museum Kampa
The central couple is surrounded by works by Georges Kars. Discovered and appreciated in recent years, the Czech author, who lived from 1882 to 1945, painted portraits and street scenes with an elegant modernist shorthand and expressive colors. For example, his early painting Riders and loiterers in the park from the beginning of the 20th century, Parida’s court or Rest in the forest hang in Kampa. The Paris-based artist Kars did a lot for Czech modernism, among other things, by providing compatriots coming to the artistic capital with an excellent guide to the important places of the nascent avant-garde.
The show continues with works by the most famous Czech modernists. There are paintings by Jan Zrzavý, one chapter called Possibilities of Cubism includes works by Emil Filla, Bohumil Kubišta, Antonín Procházka. The organizers exhibited the canvas Sweetness of Life by František Kupka.
Another room with a raised floor level feels intimate, although one wall is covered by a large Absinthe Drinker by Viktor Oliva. Here Železný mainly placed nudes. Next to Kupka’s art nouveau Woman in the Mirror, he placed a modern Toilet by Josef Čapek, Kars’s Woman with a Parrot and, for example, the realistic painting After a Bath by Rudolf Kremlička.
Medek as an altar
One floor up, the selection from the collection continues from the mid-1930s. There is a lot of surrealism to be seen here, there are Jindřich Štyrský and Toyen, František Muzika, two beautiful canvases by Josef Šíma The Fall of Icarus and Old Tree in the Rocks. Zdeněk Sklenář is also represented with two works.
As is often the case at the end of a castle tour of the chapel, the last room of the exhibition is also used for meditation. A large painting by Mikuláš Medek, The Wound of the Fourth Inquisitor, from 1965 hangs at the head, modeled after the altars. The bewitching work glows cutting orange and red, like a fire burning in the dark.
Mikuláš Medek: The Sorrow of the Fourth Inquisitor, 1965, oil on canvas. | Photo: Museum Kampa
To the left of the “altar” are Medko’s famous blue figures Action I (Egg) and Action II (Wool), on the opposite side the Prone Mother and the Smoking Feast. The meditative character is complemented by the works of Jan Koblasa and Květa Válova.
The show Husa na Kampa is well structured dramaturgically, well-known authors are complemented by lesser-known names. In his role as a curator, Železný showed great self-control when he selected approximately one hundred items from his collection of 1,500 items.
An interesting addition is the catalog, the text part of which is dominated by an interview about the collection. It began to be created in 1994, when Železný, as the director of a new television, received funds for art. “The first purchases were confusing, because I was completely amazed that I got something that I wanted,” says the entrepreneur, who began to build a collection from big names.
Only a fraction of the first acquisitions have survived to the present day. “After several years, I have often found that this is a painting that no longer appeals to me and which, especially in the context of the work of the given author, is not as significant as three, four, seven, nine of his other paintings that I have bought in the meantime without any problems,” explains the collector .
The picture from the exhibition Husa na Kampa shows the oil on canvas Object phantom by Toyen from 1937. | Photo: Martin Šimral
The direction that proved to be very fruitful for Železný was art originating from the 1960s. At one point he even considered selling the modernist works and focusing only on this period.
Meanwhile, at the time when he started collecting the works of the 60s, neither collectors nor institutions showed much interest in them. However, it was a matter of the heart for Železný. “My generation was coming of age then, and we had a period where every day was better than the day before,” he explains.
He bought directly from the studios. “I could buy works that I saw at exhibitions in the 1960s, because at that time I hardly missed any important exhibition,” recounts Železný, who thanks to this got to know many authors personally.
From experience, he observed the rule: “The better the painting, the later the artist wants to sell it. He wants to keep it with him. The first thing the artist offers you in the studio is never the best thing he has there.”
The picture from the Husa na Kampa exhibition shows the oil on canvas The Sweetness of Life by František Kupka from 1929. | Photo: Martin Šimral
Hectic pace
In the period from 1995 to 1998, according to his calculations, he bought four paintings a day, which is confirmed by gallerist Jiří Švestka in the catalog. He was looking for pictures for him.
Železný classifies himself as a collector who prefers personal interest to fame and market value. “I never buy works just because they are ‘important’,” he declares.
Therefore, some development tendencies are missing in his collection. He does not own all the creative transformations or his favorite Mikuláš Medek. Even if he had the opportunity to close the “holes”, he didn’t. He only takes works that take his heart.
“I’ve never bought by reputation, or by estimate, or by what’s written in the auction catalog. I have to go and look at every painting. I stand in front of him for a minute, two, and he messes with me like that, and I’m like, ‘Well, of course, that’s it,” he describes in the catalog.
It gives an insight into the thinking of the biggest players in Czech auctions. “Over time, even record prices will turn out to be advantageous. At Modrý Medk, it literally took a few days. Two or three days after the Prague auction at which I bought Vajíčko, a well-known gallery owner came to me saying he had a message for me. “If Vajíčko and Vlna were for sale at the same time, he would have a buyer who would offer 120 million crowns. That was roughly one and a half times the amount I bid for,” he says.
He finances purchases from recent years by selling other works. “Sometimes I reach for things that are essential so that I can buy even more essential ones,” he adds.
Vladimír Železný’s collection is unique not only because of its quality and clear collecting intent, but also because it remains open. The entrepreneur relies on the fact that he frequently lends paintings to exhibitions, which is not just a proclamation. At Kampa, one realizes how many paintings one knows “live”, because one has recently encountered them elsewhere.