What will happen when all the pictures disappear from the museum? This – at first glance absurd – idea was played with by the Moravian Gallery together with the artists Jiří Franta and David Böhm. They redrew classic paintings by Josef Čapek, Jan Zrzavý and Toyen and breathed new life into them directly on the gallery walls.
The artist duo Jiří Franta and David Böhm were invited by the Moravian Gallery to collaboration when it was getting ready to lend two important works from its permanent exhibition to a show at the Belvedere in Vienna. The paintings Hanged Man by Bohumil Kubišta and Prometheus by Antonín Procházka were replaced by watercolour drawings created directly on the walls of the exhibition room. Difficult to overlook, the black contours of the motifs of the works, reminiscent of comic strip drawings, injected new life into the space of the permanent exhibition.
In the end the result was so captivating that the Moravian Gallery decided to approach Böhm and Franta with a proposal for a bold project - redrawing all the pictures in the permanent exhibition of modernism. The works are now being created directly inside the gallery spaces and they will be unveiled completely for the first time to visitors to Brno Museum Night. The original works will be removed and stored in the repository to be returned to their respective places on 15th June. It is only for a few days then that visitors will be able to enjoy the unusual experience of original interpretations of classic works and the now probably well-known permanent exhibition of the Moravian Gallery!
The drawings by Jiří Franta and David Böhm will be used as the basis for creating an unconventional catalogue of the permanent exhibition, work sheets for pupils of kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools and accompanying programmes for children and adult visitors, which will reflect the issue of transferring a picture into an original copy.
David Böhm (1982) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (the studios of Vladimír Skrepl and Vladimír Kokolia). He took part in many solo and group exhibitions and book collaborations, winning several awards. These included the Magnesia Litera for the bookHlava v hlavě, which received the Most Beautiful Book of the Year award, or the Golden Ribbon for Artistic Achievement, as appraisal of the bookTicho hrocha.
Jiří Franta (1978), a graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (the studios of Antonín Střížek and Vladimír Skrepl), is a member of the Rafani artist group and is currently lecturing in the Studio of Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts VUT in Brno. He did the artwork for the bookProč obrazy nepotřebují názvy, which received the Magnesia Litera award. Together with David Böhm he was repeatedly nominated for the Jindřich Chalupecký Award.