Collection and Archive of Jiří Valoch

The collection of Jiří Valoch has so far been publicly presented most completely within the permanent exhibition ART IS HERE: New Art after 1945, opened in the Moravian Gallery in 2015 with the aim of showcasing the local art scene with its international connections.

The core of the collection is centred around the artistic trends which began to emerge on the Czech and the international scene at the beginning of the1960s (visual poetry, conceptual art, computer graphics, geometrical abstraction and mail art). Apart from Valoch's sheer passion as a collector it testifies to his position as an internationally-established artist. A number of works in the collection (by Adriena Šimotová, Vladimír Boudník, Zdeněk Sýkora, Milan Knížák, Ladislav Novák, Alena Kučerová, Jan Steklík, Marian Palla, Stano Filko, Július Koller and others) are connected with Valoch's curatorial activities in the Brno House of Arts, where he worked from the mid-1960s to 2002. A major section of the collection is made up of material charting the history of ephemeral artistic expressions with evidence in the form of photographic documentation and/or texts. For example, the concept of the Invisible Sculpture by the German artist Joseph Beuys is represented by a picture postcard signed by himself, while action art is extensively documented by a large number of photographs.

Together with the collection, the Moravian Gallery in Brno has acquired the archive which allows us to map out Valoch's artistic and curatorial endeavours as well as gain a panoramic picture of the history of Brno's conceptually-oriented scene and its international contacts. 

Curator: Jana Písaříková, +420 778 522 853, jana.pisarikova@moravska-galerie.cz

Archivist: Viola Borková, viola.borkova@moravska-galerie.cz