Vlasta Vostřebalová Fischerová

Between Social Art and Magic Realism

With the exhibition of Vlasta Vostřebalová Fischerová (1898-1963), the Moravian Gallery in Brno reopens the subject of unjustly marginalized Czech female artists of the interwar period. Although it spans less than twenty years, the work of Vlasta Vostřebalová Fischerová counts among the most original examples of "new realisms" in Czech art of the 1920s and 1930s.

The beginnings of Vlasta Vostřebalová Fischerová's professional career involved studies under Vojtěch Hynais and Jan Štursa at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague. Yet the artist soon parted with authorities and around the mid-1920s arrived at a unique painting and drawing style into which she projected her interest in borderline life situations as well as a sense of poignant caricature parallel to the New Objectivity movement. Her models were men, women and children from the edges of society, city outskirts and the country represented in a number of magnificent psychological portraits. Apart from portraiture, Vostřebalová Fischerová devoted herself to landscape art and subjects with strong autobiographical elements.

Vlasta Vostřebalová Fischerová's work was first displayed in the Topič Salon, Prague in 1925, alongside the oeuvre of Milada Marešová, a fellow student. The exhibition was followed by two solo shows in the Municipal Library, Prague in 1934. Vostřebalová Fischerová's career was interrupted by the Second World War, and her artistic legacy was later neither exhibited nor assessed in its entirety. One of a few exhibitions dedicated to the artist took place in the Aleš South-Bohemian Gallery in 1986, nearly twenty-five years after her death.

The exhibition of Vlasta Vostřebalová Fischerová in the Moravian Gallery and her first monograph catalogue present pieces from public and private collections. Paintings and drawings dominated by bizarre poetics and a strong social appeal, supplemented with recently discovered archive materials including the artist's architectural designs and personal correspondence, reveal an original and multi-faceted body of work that holds an important place in modern Czech art.