Back from black

Part of the "Ostrava in Prague" festival that has been running in the capital city since May, the "Café Ostrava" exhibition at Mánes Gallery has the ambitious aim of presenting an overview of the city's cultural life over the past century. It emphasizes the links between the interwar First Republic, when Ostrava's multicultural population made for a vigorous and diverse cultural life, and the present day, when the city is undergoing a transformation from a center of heavy industry to a postindustrial town trying to build a new future as a cultural center.

The show doesn't, however, ignore the more problematic issue of the communist period, when the regime's promotion of heavy industry in Ostrava at almost any cost was devastating to the city's cultural life. While the city's artistic development in those decades was brutally disrupted, it did not die out. There were pockets of activity, such as the Symposium of Spatial Forms, that managed to keep a flicker of an international and progressive cultural spirit alive.

In terms of the city's cultural future, at this stage it is inseparably tied to the hope of winning the title of European Capital of Culture 2015. The competition, now in its second round, pits Ostrava against the west Bohemian city of Plzeň; the selection commission will announce will announce the winner in early September. Among other opportunities that the title would bring, the city would have the chance to build up its cultural infrastructure. A number of plans for architectural projects are incorporated into the exhibition.

Three main threads are interwoven in this exhibition. The first is a presentation of the city's main art institution, the Gallery of Fine Art in Ostrava, which is the organizer of the show (and whose director, Jiří Jůza, is the curator). Another thread highlights Ostrava's architecture, from important examples of interwar buildings to impressive projects for revitalizing former industrial sites. The third main thread is the history of art collecting in Ostrava, not only institutional but mainly private and corporate collecting, which was active in the First Republic and is building momentum once again.

The Gallery of Fine Art is Ostrava's main collection-building institution, housed in the city's most important example of Czech Functionalism, the 1926 House of Arts, built by two students of Jan Kotěra. A new annex for the building is currently in the works. The museum has built up a representative cross-section of significant Czech artists and artistic styles, with an emphasis on regional artists and themes, such as coal and steel production and landscapes dominated by billowing smokestacks and slag heaps.

In this regard, among the emblematic pieces from the museum's collection are a 1933 work by the internationally recognized Czech Modernist Jan Zrzavý, Ostrava Slag Heaps, and the 1920 painting Black Country by regional artist Břetislav Bartoš. Painting in a style that might be called proto-Socialist Realism, he portrays a bare-chested man hoisting a sledge hammer skyward while his barefoot and bare-chested wife breastfeeds their baby. Behind them is a blazing orange sky and an endless progression of factory smokestacks.

The presentation of the museum's collection is interwoven with works from private collections in Ostrava. In the First Republic, the most significant private art collector was Roger Federer, director of the Vítkovice Ironworks. After the communist takeover, his collection was nationalized, and many of the works were incorporated into the Gallery of Fine Art. After 1989, they were restituted to Federer's descendents. Several that have appeared at auction were purchased by the preeminent private art collector in Ostrava today - Jan Světlík, the general director of Vítkovice Holding - making a rather complicated, full-circle return.

Among the works formerly in the Federer collection and now owned by Vítkovice are Antonín Hudeček's Autumn Stream (1910) and Austrian artist Anton Faistauer's Houses on a Slope. Other highlights among the privately collected works are three pieces by František Kupka and two works by Oskar Kokoschka, including a view of Ostrava that Kokoschka painted during a stay in the city in 1937.

The city's architecture - past and future - also plays a starring role. In addition to panels with photographs and information about First Republic-era buildings, including the House of Arts, Ostrava City Hall, storied department stores and a bank building designed by Josef Gočár, there are models of major redevelopment projects planned for Ostrava.

Tying all the threads together in "Café Ostrava" is the theme of interwar café society. As with art-collecting and architecture, the aim is to link to the past and renew these traditions in the 21st century. Scattered throughout the exhibition space are café tables printed with excerpts of text by noted Ostrava writers. Additionally, a temporary café has been set up in the front of the gallery, providing a welcome place for refreshment while visiting the show.

In focusing on the illustrious past and promising future for Ostrava culture, the show doesn't just fast-forward from the First Republic to the present. While culture struggled during the communist era, it didn't disappear. The Symposium of Spatial Forms, for example, took place in 1967 and again in 1969. Czech and international artists came to Ostrava to create iron and metal sculptures, which were then displayed in public spaces in the city. It was at the 1967 symposium that Aleš Veselý created Kaddish - a milestone in 20th-century Czech sculpture (a maquette is exhibited at Mánes). The sculptures created at the symposium were eventually dismantled and even destroyed, but Veselý was able to remove his before that could happen.

Installed near the maquette for Vesely's Kaddish - a somber jagged steel construction whose title refers to the Jewish mourning ritual - is another sculpture from that symposium, Štefan Bělohradský's 1967 Tree of Hope. Taken together, they perhaps present a metaphor for Ostrava's cultural history over the past century, a lament for its destruction by World War II and communist rule, and optimism for its revival.

Mimi Fronczak Rogers can be reached at
Features@praguepost.com