Historic gallery back in business

The Václav Špála Gallery has been pulled back from the brink after being closed earlier this year due to a lack of funding. A firm owned by one of the country's richest men has stepped in with an ambitious exhibition plan to reinstate the relevance of "Špálovka," as it is affectionately known.

The gallery reopens with a multimedia exhibition by well-known Czech artist Jiří Černický, the 1998 winner of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. "Gargarin's Thing and Things I Don't Regret," the title of which refers to Yuri Gargarin, the Russian cosmonaut who became the first human being in space, consists of photos and videos that reference Gargarin and Soviet culture at times directly and at times obliquely.

"We could say that Gagarin's thing is something like the Forrest Gump of visual art, which runs through the second half of the 20th century," Černický said of the exhibition, which will run until Oct. 31.

The Václav Špála Gallery - whose glass storefront is one of the mainstays of the stretch of Národní street between Tesco and the bottom of Wenceslas Square - takes its name from the famous Czech painter. It opened in 1957 in the space of a First Republic printing house and bookshop. The gallery's heyday came between 1965 and 1970, when the prominent art theorist Jindřich Chalupecký was its chief curator. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, however, the gallery exhibited only "official" art.

Beginning in the 1990s, Špálovka began to build a reputation as a progressive gallery focused on contemporary Czech art, exhibiting each year the work of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award winner. In 2007, the gallery came under the management of Semma, a company that agreed to manage the gallery until 2017. That agreement was terminated early this year, however, due to a lack of funds.

Gallery management company PPF Art has now taken the reins. The company is becoming something of an anchor on the Czech art scene, as it already owns the Josef Sudek Atelier, the Louvre Gallery of Photography, and Galerie České pojišťovny. The company's exhibition schedule for Špálovka stretches to 2012 and includes Czech artists such as Jiří David, Petr Pastrňák, Petr Nikl, František Skála, Kateřina Vincourová and Markéta Othová, among others. The gallery will present six exhibitions each year.

According to Jan Řehák, the director of the art gallery division at PPF Art, the company's main ambition for Špálovka is to provide "a high-quality exhibition program."

"PPF wants to build on the tradition of the gallery, to respect and further develop its historical focus and creativity. Thanks to its location in the center and the size of the space, Václav Špála is among the greatest Czech galleries," he said.

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com