A native of Náchod, Václav Šrůtek (1885–1948) was a multi-talented artist. Throughout his life, he divided his interests between architecture and design, music, and the visual arts. He received training in all three fields, graduating from the Czech Technical School (later the Czech Technical University) and the Prague Conservatory (under professors Vítězslav Novák and Josef Bohuslav Foerster), and received his early art training privately from Mařák’s favorite student, Václav Březina, who lived in the Náchod region at the turn of the century and later at the Czech Technical University (courses in portrait and figure painting taught by Adolf Liebscher Jr. beginning in 1905), and then at Alois Kalvoda’s School of Painting (1910–1914), where he also formed numerous friendships with prominent artists. He continued his studies in drawing and painting during his stays in Paris. However, he eventually made a career in planning and design. He enjoyed great success in Slovakia during the interwar years as an architect and designer. In Slovakia, he also played a significant role in the local art scene as a member of the Slovak Art Society and exhibited there repeatedly, both in solo shows and as part of group exhibitions.

Drawing—especially landscape drawing—had been a part of his artistic practice since childhood. The examples set by his teachers K. Březina and A. Kalvoda—both alumni of Mařák’s landscape painting specialization, where the primary emphasis was placed on mastering drawing in various techniques—further reinforced his conviction regarding the importance of drawing techniques. For V. Šrůtek, too, drawing in a wide variety of techniques became the cornerstone of his artistic expression. Domestic motifs were far from enough for him, because from the age of sixteen he always spent two months of his summer vacation traveling through European countries with his sister, the future writer Sida Volfová. Wherever V. Šrůtek went, he captured both rural and urban landscapes using a wide variety of drawing techniques. That is why, alongside his extensive body of paintings, there is today a considerable number of Šrůtek’s drawings. These were created not only as an immediate record of reality and what he saw, but also as preparatory studies for his paintings and as independent drawings, often forming a sort of travel journal. The family’s estate thus includes a voluminous collection of drawings organized by the artist; some of these are private works intended solely for the family. The collection of ink-pencil drawings, for example, documents his military service, which was carried out primarily on Polish territory during World War I. Many drawings were created in Slovakia, and in addition to their artistic merit, they often depict places and buildings that no longer exist. A number of drawings from his travels through Europe—including Italy, France, and what was then Yugoslavia—have also been preserved; these rank among the highlights of Šrůtek’s oeuvre. His work was stylistically influenced not only by Šrůtek’s artistic training, the history of Czech landscape painting, but also aligned with works inspired by international Neoclassicism and the so-called Paris School, particularly the styles of Maurice de Vlaminck and Raoul Dufy.

The exhibition traces the phenomenon of Václav Šrůtek’s landscape drawings—most of which have not yet been published—in chronological order and according to the locations depicted, supplemented by parallels with his paintings.

Curators: David Chaloupka, Michael Zachař