The work of two exceptional artists, life partners and contemporaries Pavel Brázda and Věra Nováková shows many similarities and, on the contrary, many contradictory tendencies. In addition to realistic painting, both also exhibited a strong stylization, and both also worked with structural images, often in an informal tendency. In the curator's opinion, their individual directions diverged both in the subject matter and motivation of Christianity, which each approached quite differently (perhaps even contradictorily), and above all in the relationship between the original/unique work and its copy. If Věra Nováková stuck to the unique artefact (often accentuated because it was, for example, portraits of personalities close to her from the world of art, but also from the Catholic faith), Pavel Brázda, in the spirit of his hoministic ideas, tended to democratise art. Art should be accessible to all, and therefore Brázda enthusiastically multiplied, reproduced and replicated it through first xerox and then digital printing on canvas. As a result, some of his figures or heads exist in many variations, appearing again and again in different compositions and schemes. The first line of the exhibition will explore the theme of characters/heads/portraits, highlighting the different artistic approaches of PB and VN.

Another important line in both artists' work is represented by book illustrations. It has become essential to the work of V. Nováková's book What Words Tell Everything, 1964 (Hiršal, Grögrová). Thanks to it, VN began to think about the relationship between the meaning and shape of letters, and this small book gave impetus to her letter paintings, some of which she also translated into objects and sculptures. Pavel Brázda not only collaborated on many of the illustrations, but above all provided his works with nonsensical titles and commentaries, or even interpreted them textually himself (often under the pseudonym Přemysl Arátor). The relationship to word and text will be the second thematic area of the exhibition, while selected texts/interpretations of Brázda's own and Véra's works will be available in the form of an audio guide.

Within the illustrations, Nováková and Brázda also worked on the illustration of flowers. However, the theme of flowers, plants and vegetation appears in many free drawings, watercolours, and even landscapes that have an almost idyllic quality. The motif of vegetation has also become a key element of Věra Nováková's convolute of paintings in which she explores the letter V. It is also linked to the painting Adam and Eve, including its sculptural variant. The motif of vegetation is characteristic of Věra Nováková, while in Pavel Brázda's work it is found mainly in his early work. The third thematic line is therefore represented by Vegetation.

The exhibition at Gallery Lázně Liberec will focus on these 3 thematic lines, which are also intertwined. The works of both artists will be installed interconnected within the exhibition. Also presented will be the book What Words Will Tell Everything, the book Our Perennials with illustrations of botanical specimens (in connection with the theme of vegetation) and last but not least the book My Dear Brothers by Helena Čapková (in connection with the theme of figures/heads/portraits), the illustrations of which were again contributed by both Pavel Brázda and Věra Nováková. The illustrations were thus intended to bring the theme of joint work into the exhibition, not purely artistic, but rather on a utilitarian level, connected with work, earnings and subsistence in the everyday life of an artistic couple.

curator: Vendula Fremlová