The exhibition by Luděk Rathouský at the Egon Schiele Art Center in Český Krumlov presents an extensive collection of paintings and drawings from several interconnected series created in recent years. More than 160 exhibited works form a comprehensive visual whole in which autobiographical memory, historical imagery, medieval iconography, and symbolic figuration intertwine to create a distinctive painterly language.

An important part of Rathouský’s work is his long-standing dialogue with the visual culture of Gothic and medieval painting. References to Master Theodoric or the Master of the Vyšebrod Altarpiece do not function here as historicizing quotations, but as living pictorial structures reactivated in contemporary painting. Ornament, symbolic gesture, devotional composition, and layered spatial logic become means of exploring emotionality and memory.

In addition to these historically resonant paintings, the exhibition also includes large-format expressive works with autobiographical elements from the early period of Rathouský’s career, as well as previously unexhibited chalk drawings of ships from the former Czechoslovak merchant marine. The highlight of the exhibition is his latest abstract works evoking the past, concentrated in one of the galleries, and a monumental canvas spanning two floors at the gallery entrance titled Ship of Desire.

Rathouský does not create a linear narrative, but rather a dense constellation of images moving between intimacy and monumentality, fragility and ornamentation, spiritual reference and existential tension. His paintings often defy unambiguous interpretation and function rather as spaces of emotional accumulation, in which historical memory, subjective mythology, and painterly materiality constantly intertwine.

The exhibition confirms Rathouský’s prominent position within the context of contemporary Czech painting: as an artist deeply rooted in the historical memory of the medium, who simultaneously transforms it into an intensely subjective and contemporary visual language.