Piestany, West Slovakia, Jan 20 (CTK) – The exhibition of Czech artist Jiri Naceradsky was ended prematurely because the paintings outraged the new director of the gallery who had some of them, depicting naked bodies, moved outside the main room, the server of the Slovak daily Pravda has written.
Due to this, the author of the exhibition ended the exhibition which was to continue until January 28, the server writes.
“The paintings and drawings by Jiri Naceradsky have been put on display by major galleries in New York, Washington, Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin and Bratislava. Everywhere, they met with acknowledgement, really never with any censorship,” the server quotes gallery owner Petr Mach, who administers Naceradsky’s work, as saying.
Mach said Naceradsky had already suffered boycott and censorship under the Communist regime.
“I can hardly believe that such an incredible approach to the free artistic expression is now revived in Slovakia,” Mach said.
Actor collector and analyst Ivan Melichercik also criticised the steps taken by the director of Galerie Fontana, Marta Jurcova.
“Without my consent, the crucial works of art of the collection were moved to quite unsuitable and undignified areas. When I happened to learn this, I asked for a premature end of the exhibition,” Melichercik said, adding that this approach was barbarous.
Melichar said he did not remember anything of this having happened in Slovakia since 1989.
Jurcova argued that the gallery was situated at the town hall, in its wedding room. The painting that may be denoted as quasi pornographic should not be in such a milieu, she added.
She said she had not known originally what paintings would be exhibited there because the exhibition had been agreed on by her predecessor Martin Valo, who is also the deputy mayor.
Valo said men and women were “in some positions” in the paintings, but they were not obscene.
He said there was a big interest in the exhibition that started on December 19.
Jiri Naceradsky (1939-2014) was a major representative of figural painting of the second half of the 20th century.
After the 1989 overthrow of the Communist regime, he worked as a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague where he studied in the 1960s. In 1991, he was appointed a professor.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Naceradsky could not officially create and had to make his living by restoration of historical buildings.
In 1978, the Paris Centre Georges Pompidou bought seven of his drawings for its collections.
