Benedikt Rejt Gallery and its collection were founded in the 1960s with the aim of collecting contemporary tendencies in visual arts. The gallery kept buying works by progressive artists even after 1968. The Benedikt Rejt Gallery owns a unique collection of constructivist pieces.
The collection of the Benedikt Rejt Gallery began in 1965, a year before the institution itself. The core of the collection is centred on constructivism. The main reason for this is the fact that a number of Czech artists (Zdeněk Sýkora, Kamil Linhart and Vladislav Mirvald) and art historians (Josef Hlaváček and Jan Sekera) interested in this style lived in Louny. Jan Sekera, the head of the gallery, recalls that the first pieces owned by the… pročitaj više
The collection of the Benedikt Rejt Gallery began in 1965, a year before the institution itself. The core of the collection is centred on constructivism. The main reason for this is the fact that a number of Czech artists (Zdeněk Sýkora, Kamil Linhart and Vladislav Mirvald) and art historians (Josef Hlaváček and Jan Sekera) interested in this style lived in Louny. Jan Sekera, the head of the gallery, recalls that the first pieces owned by the gallery were collages by Jiří Kolář. After this acquisition, Sekera started to work on the official foundation of the gallery, which was possible thanks to a number of coincidences. In August 1968, after the invasion of the Soviet Army, the gallery became part of a nationwide cultural strike. Between 1968 and 1971 a number of the people behind the gallery left Louny for Prague. In 1971 Sekera returned to Louny and became the head of the gallery, a position he retained until 1987. Thanks to him, the gallery kept purchasing works by “unofficial” artists.
In the 1960s the collection covered constructivism, graphic works and landscape paintings of the nearby České Středohoří. Until the end of the 1960s, purchases were made in symbiosis with the exhibition programme, and later works by unofficial artists (without the mentioned specialisation) were bought but not shown to public. It took until 1998, when the gallery building was renovated by Emil Přikryl, to make the collection accessible to public.
It is hard to call the activity of a regional gallery “unofficial.” The exhibition programme was approved by a number of official committees; financial support came from the public budget. Still, the programme that took place in Louny could be called unconventional, and the acquisition politics even subversive. One example may be an exhibition of Catholic artist Bohuslav Reynek in 1968, or the purchase of Otakar Slavík’s painting right after he signed Charter 77. The unconventional approach to the rules of acquisition may be visible in the fact that works by abstract artists were purchased as applied arts (the wallpaper draft). As Sekera describes, it was important to buy works by “official” artists (socialist realism), to cover those who were unofficial.
After 1968 the gallery built an extensive library with a number of foreign books on art.
The core of the collection is devoted to diverse forms of constructivism and kinetic art. The gallery owns a collection of Emil Filla works from the 1940s and 1950s that were not allowed to be exhibited at that time, and various examples of unofficial art made in the 1970s and 1980s. The gallery purchased a number of works on paper, drawings and graphics. The collection owns more than 17,000 works of art and 14,000 books.
Sadržaj
grafike: 1000-
ostala umjetnička djela (koja se ne mogu svrstati u druge kategorije filtra kao što su slike, skulpture, grafike, itd.): 10-99
