The exhibition Miroslav Lamač: Image and World recalls one of the most distinctive figures of Czech post-war art history, art criticism and curatorial practice. Miroslav Lamač was an author whose books and texts fundamentally shaped our understanding of Czech and European modern art. He was able to combine profound expertise with a rare ability to offer precise and accessible interpretation. As a result, his work became a natural part of the education of several generations of readers, collectors, art historians and admirers of modernism.

The exhibition is held on the occasion of the publication of the book Image and World, in which art historian Karel Srp pays tribute to Miroslav Lamač through an extensive selection of his essential texts. These are accompanied by Srp’s own study, which offers a new perspective on Lamač’s scholarly career, his critical positions and his importance in the return of modern art to the Czech cultural sphere. From the 1950s onward, Lamač helped shape the discourse of modern art, working as a critic, editor-in-chief of major art periodicals and co-curator of important exhibition projects, including The Founders of Modern Czech Art, New Sensibility, Paris–Prague, and the posthumously opened project Czech Cubism at the Centre Georges Pompidou.

At the same time, the installation presents artists to whom Lamač repeatedly returned throughout his life in his studies, monographs, reviews and critical reflections. It includes figures connected with the birth of Czech modernism, Cubism, imaginative art, abstraction and post-war experimentation. Works by artists such as František Kupka, Emil Filla, Antonín Procházka, Jan Zrzavý, Václav Špála, Otto Gutfreund, Adolf Hoffmeister, František Muzika, František Tichý, Jiří Kolář, Stanislav Kolíbal, Karel Malich, Mikuláš Medek and Zdeněk Sýkora form a visual counterpart to Lamač’s thinking. They reveal the breadth of his interests and his conviction that Czech modern art is a distinctive part of the European cultural sphere.

The third, deeply personal dimension of the exhibition consists of a body of Lamač’s own artistic work entitled Privatissima. For the first time, this work is presented on such a scale: created outside public artistic life, without the ambition to exhibit, primarily as an intimate space of the author’s visual imagination. Alongside writing and critical work, Lamač devoted himself to painting, watercolour, drawing, collage, photography and small objects. His works oscillate between figuration and abstraction, between sign, structure, the inner movement of form and a personal vision of the world.

The exhibition Miroslav Lamač: Image and World thus brings together three dimensions of one remarkable personality: Lamač as an art historian and author of essential texts, Lamač as an interpreter and advocate of modern art, and Lamač as the creator of a hidden, personal visual world. Together, they form a portrait of a man who not only interpreted modern art, but also lived it deeply.

Curator: Karel Srp