Gallery of fine arts in Cheb

About

Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb (Czech: Galerie výtvarného umění v Chebu, abbreviated GAVU) is an art gallery in Cheb in the Czech Republic. It is a subsidiary organization of the Karlovy Vary Region. It is located in the New Town Hall on the main town square in Cheb. Its permanent exhibition features a collection of Gothic art from the Cheb region and a collection of Czech modern art from the 19th to 21st centuries, which has been built up from the mid-1960s to the present. In 2016, it has also founded the Retromuseum, which focuses on post-war design and lifestyle and is located in the neighboring Schiller House. In the past, the gallery also used exhibition spaces in the deconsecrated churches of St. Clare and St. Bartholomew in Cheb.

The State Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb was founded in 1962 as part of a network of regional galleries under the administration of the Ministry of Education and Culture. The gallery was founded by art historian and conservator Mira Mladějovská, who was the head of the town archives and the Cheb Museum from 1946 to 1951. From 1950 to 1955, she was the director of the Cheb Town Picture Gallery, located in the town hall building. The State Gallery acquired its basic collection through transfers from the Cheb Museum and from damaged buildings in the border region. Initially, the museum owned a small collection of 17th- and 18th-century European paintings, examples of 17th-century Cheb relief intarsia, and, above all, a collection of outstanding Gothic sculptures of local provenance. Initially, the gallery focused on exhibitions of works on loan from other institutions ("Czech Painting of the 19th Century"), but from the mid-1960s onwards, it built up its own collection of Czech modern art.

The first director of the gallery was painter Bojmír Hutta (1920–1987), and his colleague until 1969 was Mira Mladějovská. Since 1965, the Cheb Gallery has also been responsible for the restoration of sculptures collected from the region and placed at Starý Hrozňatov Castle. The sculpture park in the castle was to be expanded with contemporary works from the proposed Sculpture and Landscape Biennial. After Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 the sculpture symposium could no longer take place, and in 1972 the castle was taken over by the Ministry of the Interior.

At the beginning of normalization, Bojmír Hutta was dismissed and, moreover, "classified as an unreliable person, lost his passport, and was monitored by the State Security until the end of his life." The newly appointed director, František Peťas (1912–1976), continued B. Hutta's concept and did not prevent the purchase of works by artists who had been subjected to various forms of harassment during normalization. After his death, the gallery's former expert employee, cultural scientist Ludmila Vomelová, took over as director in 1976. She contributed to the expansion of the collections and also developed concert activities and other accompanying events, thanks to which the gallery became an important cultural centre in the region. From 1976 to 1987, art historian Božena Vachudová worked there as an independent expert. Anna Sochorová was employed there since 1976, from 1992 to 2008 as chief curator.

From 1968 to 1970 and again from 1987, art historian Jiří Vykoukal worked at the gallery, becoming its director in 1990. From 1991 to 2001, he was chairman of the Council of Galleries of the Czech Republic. During his tenure, the Cheb gallery became one of the leading art museums in the Czech Republic, establishing a clear profile for its exhibition, collection, and publishing activities and organizing a number of major projects that were well received throughout the Czech Republic. In 1968, he organized the first and last edition of the "Triennial of South Bohemian, North Bohemian, and West Bohemian Artists in Cheb," which took place from October 1968 to January 1969. In 2001, the Cheb gallery was transferred to the administration of the Karlovy Vary Region. In 2010, Jiří Vykoukal resigned for personal reasons and Marcel Fišer was appointed director on the basis of a competitive selection process. Jiří Gordon works at the gallery as the head of the professional department and curator.

In the past, the Cheb region was predominantly populated by ethnic Germans. Therefore, in 2004, the Cheb Gallery of Fine Arts began organizing a symposium entitled "Gaps in History – Lücken in der Geschichte," which refers to the exhibition "Gaps in History, 1890–1938: The Polemical Spirit of Central Europe – Germans, Jews, Czechs" (Prague City Gallery, 1994, curator Hana Rousová). The curator of the symposium, in which GAVU participated together with the Mid-Europe Festival until 2009, was Jana Orlíková-Brabcová. In 2012, the symposium was revived and is held in cooperation with the Regional Gallery in Liberec alternately in Cheb and Liberec. It includes exhibition and publication projects prepared in cooperation with the Arbor vitae publishing house. From the beginning, the symposium has been dedicated to the work of German-speaking artists who were active in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia until the end of World War II. The contributions of the first five years are summarized in the anthology of the same name (2010).

In 2009, the Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb initiated the Graffiti Boom project. Until 2016, it organized the Graffiti Boom festival, during which street artists created their works in public spaces and on prepared panels. The festival included the creation of large-format graffiti by one of the artists and, as part of the Graffiti Jam exhibition, vernissages, music events, and workshops for children and young people. The authors of the large-format graffiti were Jan Kaláb Point (2009), Masker (2011), Tron (2012), Pasta Oner (2013), Keim and Peok, Obic and Tron, X-Dog, Oblut, Poster 177, Smek, Sabon, Saon, Laser, Raso, and others (2014), Tron (2015), Luděk Keim and Tomáš Kocka (2016). The festival was held with financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the town of Cheb.

In 2013, the collections underwent a major reinstallation. The Cheb Gothic art was transferred from the Church of St. Clare to the new permanent exhibition on the second floor of the town hall, and Church of St. Clare was returned to the town as a concert and wedding hall. By 2016, other exhibition spaces in the main building had been gradually renovated to meet international standards for contemporary art museums. The Ministry of Culture recognized GAVU's exhibition program as the best of all the regional galleries it administers and provided subsidies for exhibitions and new acquisitions for the collections.

Since 1962, the Club of Friends of Fine Arts has been active in Cheb, organizing concerts, discussions with artists, screenings of films about art, and lectures on literature. The main organizer was Zlata Huttová (1935–2001), who married Bojmír Hutta in the early 1960s and later began working as a gallery specialist. After the reconstruction of Church of St. Bartholomew, the club organized regular concerts there. From 1966 to 1969, it hosted the Chamber Music Festival, followed in subsequent years by the Music and Art series, which continues to the present day. At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, the club also used the Starý Hrozňatov castle and, from 1975, the Church of St. Clare.

The palace, built according to a design by Prague architect Antonín Haffenecker, is a Baroque architecture dating from 1723 to 1727. The town hall was originally designed as a monumental two-story building with a facade divided by a high order of pilasters, with a central section and two side wings with portals and towers. Due to a lack of funds, only the south wing with a courtyard section (1727) and later the clock tower (1849) were built. Inside the building, there is a central grand staircase leading to both floors of the building. The ceiling of the staircase with a mirror vault is decorated with stucco work featuring the coats of arms of Cheb mayors, allegorical figures of virtues, the coats of arms of Bohemia, Austria and Hungary, and the Habsburg family coat of arms. The staircase is lined with a stone balustrade, with a statue of St. Joseph by the Cheb sculptor Johann Carl Stilp (1668–1735) and a statue of Hercules by the sculptor Petr Anton Felsner (active 1710–1745) on the second floor.

On the second floor, in the right wing, there is a permanent exhibition of Cheb Gothic sculpture. There is also the so-called Great Gallery (focused on large exhibition projects) and the "Opus magnum" exhibition format, which presents individual extraordinary works of Czech and foreign art.

A permanent exhibition of modern and contemporary art, which presents the development of Czech art from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, occupies the entire first floor of the Town Hall Palace. The expansion and profiling of the modern art collection is credited to art historian Jiří Vykoukal, who in addition to modern art, focused primarily on the artists active during World War II and on younger generations. Thematically oriented temporary exhibitions, located in the side hall of the permanent exhibition of Czech modern art, present a selection of works stored in the gallery's depositories. In 2012, the exhibition of modern and contemporary art on the first floor of the town hall was reinstalled, equipped with new paneling and gallery lighting, and expanded by two rooms and a panel in the hallway.

On the ground floor, there is the Small Gallery focused on the works of the youngest and middle generations of artists, as well as a museum café with space for exhibitions of modern Czech illustration and a lecture hall. In the basement, there is a multipurpose hall reserved for working with children and standard educational work. There is also a children's corner/gallery "under the baobab tree" on the second floor, reserved for children.

Death of the Virgin Mary of Hazlov (1500–1520)

Sculptures of Resting Christs (16th century)

František Bílek, Spiritual Meeting (1925)

The founding of the Gothic sculpture gallery is closely linked to the post-war history of Cheb, whose centre suffered damage during World War II and fell into disrepair after the post-war displacement of the German population until 1950, when it was declared a historic preservation area. Between 1950 and 1967, the historic centre of the town underwent a complete reconstruction, and a new use was sought for a number of architectural monuments, including the hospital Church of St. Bartholomew, whose generous reconstruction was designed by Otto Rothmayer. At the suggestion of the then director of the Cheb Gallery, Bojmír Hutta, an exhibition of Gothic sculpture was established here in 1967. Most of the exhibits came from destroyed and demolished buildings throughout the region, from property transfers, and some were later acquired through purchases. The restoration of the sculptures took place in several stages from the 1960s to the first half of the 1970s and was paid for by the Cheb Gallery. In 1999, the Church of St. Bartholomew was returned in restitution to the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star and the entire exhibition was moved in 2004 to the former church of the Cheb Poor Clares, which the gallery had previously used as an exhibition and concert hall.

Church of St. Clare built in 1708–1711 according to a design by Christoph Dientzenhofer was deconsecrated in 1782 when Emperor Joseph II abolished the monastery. In the following years, the monastery served as a brewery warehouse, military school, and prison until 1905, when it was purchased by the town of Cheb. The town placed its archives there and demolished part of the buildings. After World War I, the devastated church was saved by the Association for the Construction of a Memorial Hall. In 1923, the town of Cheb bought the entire monastery complex and, after reconstruction in 1937, established a memorial hall in the church for those who died in World War I. After World War II, the church served as a warehouse for confiscated German property, and between 1965 and 1969 it underwent another costly restoration. A mastery organ instrument by Rieger–Kloss in Krnov was installed in place of the original altar, and in 1973 it was opened as an exhibition and concert hall. Between 2000 and 2001, it was rebuilt again for the needs of the Cheb Gallery, and in 2004, an exhibition of Cheb Gothic art was installed there, along with a smaller exhibition of a collection of 17th- and 18th-century European paintings. The church had to be heated all year round at great expense, so since 2013, the exhibition of Cheb Gothic sculpture has been permanently located on the second floor of the Town Hall Palace.

Retromuseum is a branch of the gallery focused on post-war design with overlaps into other disciplines (architecture, music) and lifestyle. It was established in less than two years between March 2014 and February 2016 thanks to the support of the town of Cheb, which provided the building known as Schiller House free of charge. The renovation of the house was financed by the European Union – ROP Northwest and the Karlovy Vary Region. In addition to the main exposition hall, there is also an exhibition space at the second floor for temporary exhibitions. The main curator of the Retromuseum is art historian Daniela Kramerová, author of a monumental exhibition dedicated to the Brussels style and commemorating the highly acclaimed Czech participation in Expo 58 in Brussels.

Death of the Virgin Mary of Hazlov (1500–1520)