Painters Markéta Hermanová and Aleš Hudeček have been an integral part of the Ostrava art scene for more than twenty years. Although they are a couple and share a studio, each artist remains an independent creator in their own right. Not that their works do not show signs of a certain kinship or mutual inspiration.

Their paintings are dense and unmistakably vivid in color. They speak in a relentless style that conveys to the viewer an uncompromising devotion to painting as a medium. No beating around the bush, no excuses, no shortcuts. In their hands, painting is a sincere life passion, where inner worlds and their meanings are revealed through perfectly mastered craftsmanship.

Markéta Hermanová explores landscape compositions in her paintings, primarily from the Beroun region, in which she captures traces of human presence and subjects them to her own creative interpretation. She reinterprets them both compositionally and, above all, through color. Her paintings are narrative; they are stories of abandoned structures in a landscape without beginning or end. They are more like mementos or still lifes behind which we can sense a story.

Aleš Hudeček works with the anatomy of the figure and space in his paintings, eclectically combining Rococo and Modernist elements to create a peculiar, nostalgic sense of timelessness. All of this is presented within a contemporary color spectrum. In reality, he pieces together various kinds of half-forgotten memories that, much like parts of certain figures, do not quite fit together. His paintings are like a distant memory that we cannot quite recall with complete precision.

Become a witness to the quiet dialogue between two close people and two different minds. It’s entirely up to you how you let the situation affect you. In either case, a powerful experience awaits you.