The exhibition showcases an exceptional and generous gift that the West Bohemian Gallery in Pilsen received in 2025 from Marie Christine Sekal (1943–2023), the widow of the leading Czech sculptor, painter, and translator Zbyněk Sekal (1923–1998), who had lived in Vienna since 1970. 

This extraordinary collection of 102 works spans virtually the entire period of Sekal’s career, from works from the first half of the 1950s, through key works of the 1960s, to works created from the 1970s until the artist’s death in 1998 while in exile. 

Each period features key works, and the artist’s diary entries—which are part of the exhibition—are essential to understanding them. They provide valuable insight not only into the artist’s creative self-reflection but also into his creative process and personal dialogue with the materials he found in household waste. This is also the source of the exhibition’s title Beloved Beings. For Sekal, his material (“fabric”) was a collection of living and beloved beings with whom he spoke and who urged him to take them in. 

The exhibition was curated by Marie Klimešová, a leading expert on Sekal’s work, who conceived it as a structured reflection on a precious gift. The exhibition creates a framework within which Sekal’s sculptures, hanging assemblages (so-called “folded paintings”) and a valuable series of three-dimensional wooden structures referred to by the artist as “caskets”—along with a selection of his diary reflections—reveal not only the complex internal connections across the stages of the artist’s life and his creative themes, but above all the great artistic power of this body of work.