Plzen, Sept 21 (CTK) – An exhibition of the works of Czech artists documenting the migration of people between 1938 and 1953 (during WWII and its aftermath) opened in the Gallery of West Bohemia on Thursday.
Among the hundreds of thousands of people travelling across the country in that period were German antifascists and Czechs expelled from the Sudenland before WWII, Jews, Roma and political prisoners transported to concentration camps, Germans expelled from the border region after WWII, people fleeing the country after the 1948 Communist putsch for the West and new inhabitants settling in the vacant border region.
These people were captured both in period photographs and in works of art. “The exhibition’s message is humanitarian and very socially up-to-date with regard to the flood of migrants that Europe has been experiencing in the past three years,” Roman Musil, the gallery director, told CTK.
“Between 1938 and 1953, the most massive involuntary transfers of Europeans ever in their history took place. The transfers originated and were realised based on the Nazi ideology and, after the war, on the totalitarian Communist regime,” Musil said.
Photos by unknown authors are the core of the exhibition located in the Masne kramy exhibition hall, showing anonymous masses, crowds, lines of people fleeing from danger, seeking asylum, looking for a place to hide from the monstrosity of both regimes or from the war events, he said.
Paintings, collages and drawings form the exhibition’s second part, often documenting the period with allegories and metaphoric expressions.
Famous Czech painters such as Emil Filla and Josef Capek, who were both interned in concentration camps, are on display.
The exhibition will be open until January 21, 2018.
