Prague, Dec 6 (CTK) – The National Gallery (NG) in Prague plans an exhibition of German painter Gerhard Richter, 84, the most expensive living artist, which will be his first retrospective in Central Europe, in 2017, NG director Jiri Fajt told reporters yesterday.
The gallery will also display works by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, 59, as well as Czechs Magdalena Jetelova, 70, and Frantisek Skala, 60, next year.
The probably most expensive post-war work of art that is in a Czech institution’s collections, Richter’s Uncle Rudi, will be put on display at his exhibition in Prague, along with more than other 50 artifacts loaned from abroad.
The painter donated Uncle Rudi to the Lidice Memorial, marking a Czech village obliterated by the Nazis in 1942, years ago.
The NG’s new season will open with two exhibitions on the Charter 77 anti-communist movement and human rights manifesto on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.
The “Charter Story” exhibition focused on underground poet and dissident “Magor” Ivan Martin Jirous (1944-2011) will be held in the Salm Palace outside Prague Castle from January 20.
It will be accompanied by a photographic display to show the unofficial, parallel culture that existed during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Fajt said.
The NG’s programme for next year will present significant personalities of the world and Czech art scenes.
After the installation of the Zodiac sculpture project outside the NG premises in the Veletrzni palace this year, the Chinese artist is preparing a monumental installation directly for the main hall in this palace, Fajt said without elaborating.
The NG will also hold an exhibition of old masters’ works in the Wallenstein Riding School that will focus on one of the major Renaissance art patrons, Habsburg Archduke and Czech Governor Ferdinand (1529-1595).
The retrospective exhibition of Richter will open in the Kinsky Palace on Old-Town Square on April 25 within the Czech-German Culture Spring 2017 project on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Czech-German Declaration.
The exhibition will offer his early works in the genre of photographic realism, expressive abstract works from the 1980s and 90s as well as his colourful experiments and geometric abstraction of the past two decades.
The event is to show Richter’s style of painting that accentuates history, not only of Germany, but also of his own family and of art.
Uncle Rudi depicts Richter’s uncle in the uniform of Wehrmacht. Lidice gained the artifact from the author in the 1960s, when he was not that famous, within the Lidice Shall Live project in which artists from all over the world were sending their works to the memorial.
Richter is also the most expensive living artist now. His paintings are sold at auctions for hundreds of millions of crowns. His Domplatz, Mailand painting went off for 37 million dollars at Sotheby’s in 2013.
($1=25.276 crowns)
