After a long break, Prague City Gallery presents new works it has acquired over the last five years. At first, thanks to some savings from our regular operation, we bought several works that were part of the long-term exhibition at the After the Velvet Revolution Golden Ring House. The concept of that exhibition consisted of a number of works on loan from artists who were promised that their works would be purchased over the course of time. Unfortunately, for many years this had not been possible due to a lack of funds. In 2013, when we managed to stabilize our budget so that we were able to make at least a few important purchases from this body of works, we decided to proceed in this way in the years to come. However, it appeared that it would be a rather tedious and lengthy process which would depend entirely on our economic results.
The situation changed radically in 2014, when our founder allocated direct investment funds to us for the purchase of works which should gradually “model” our rather comprehensive (but very randomly formed) collection. The first attempts to found a metropolitan gallery were made in the 1880s when, in addition to occasional purchases, the city of Prague was given donations by artists who sought to establish a Prague city gallery. The hesitant approach to the founding of this institution resulted in a further inorganic concentration of works regardless of their actual quality or artistic contribution. Later, following the establishment of a counseling body in charge of acquisitions, the purchases were influenced by the dictatorship of the acting members of that board. The situation did not change after the formal founding of the Prague City Gallery in 1963, when experts within the institution only sometimes succeeded in breaking up the influx of works devotedly celebrating the political regime of the time and its “achievements”.
A certain turnaround did not come until the 1980s, when Prague City Gallery organized a number of significant exhibitions providing an expert evaluation of the exhibiting artists and their oeuvres. Thanks to these exceptional projects, Prague City Gallery acquired many works from artists’ estates and studios which formed the basis for our further efforts. It has to be borne in mind that state, regional or municipal galleries could not take part in the emerging art market during the 1990s and the beginning of the 21 century because they did not have any funds for purchases, and so they totally missed the wave of restitutions that brought an incredible number of excellent works to the market, especially from the interwar period, which went mostly to private collections. Institutions such as Prague City Gallery own very few examples of this important period, so they have had to resign themselves to an effort to bridge these gaps in their collections and set new goals in their acquisition programs. In our case, it has been logical to focus primarily on the second half of the 20 century and the early 21 century. Although the availability of the 1960s works is running out, there is still a chance to represent this key period in a dignified manner, thanks to the generosity of the members of that generation.
Our exhibition program attends largely to Neo-Constructivism, Geometry and Minimalism and the diverse trends that continue to develop these schools. This is the main source of today’s acquisitions which, together with Conceptual and Post-Conceptual works, represent the other pillars of our collection that may be presented in the future as a permanent exhibition. Another significant source of new works are the exhibitions within the series, which for many years has been mapping beginning artists on the Czech scene. However, we are not entirely dependent on our own financing because the artists themselves are very supportive and often donate some of their exhibited works to us. Corporate support is on the rise, too, and this deserves great attention and respect because in our country such benefactors represent rare specimens of corporate social responsibility.
One of our most recent donors was Jan Koblasa (5 October 1932 – 3 October 2017), to whom I would like to dedicate this exhibition.
Magdalena Juříková
Prague City Gallery Director
Online Catalogue created by U+Design