Eva Švankmajerová: Woe to the image...

The exhibition will showcase the entire work of painter, poet, scenographer, writer, and leading artist of the Czech surrealist movement Eva Švankmajerová.

The exhibition will present the work of painter, poet, set designer, writer, and leading artist of the Czech surrealist movement Eva Švankmajerová in all its breadth. In addition to her free creations (paintings, drawings, sculptures), it will showcase her original ceramics, painted furniture, and decorations for Jan Švankmajer's films, as well as designs for film posters. After studying at DAMU (Department of Set Design for Puppet Theatre), she devoted herself to free creation and artistically contributed to the films of Jan Švankmajer, Jiří Brdečka, and Juraj Herz. She also collaborated with Laterna Magika. From 1964 to 1968, she was a member of the Máj Group and from 1970 until the end of her life, a member of the surrealist group. In Eva Švankmajerová's artistic work, admiration for the naive creations of Henri Rousseau intersects in a completely original way with surrealist imagination and sarcastic humor. The fundamental themes of her work included the female body and the female condition in a male-dominated society. However, she approaches these themes with her own ruthless irony and self-irony, to which she also subjects the emancipatory effort. Through various methods, she explores the imaginative possibilities of the image, and her entire work is permeated with themes such as eroticism, humor, alchemy, nature, as well as household, family, and female roles. Poetry was essential for her, whether expressed through image, drawing, sculpture, poetry, or text, and the creative process itself was more important to her than the final artifact. Curator: Anna Pravdová in collaboration with Jan Švankmajer.