The collection display The Ballad of a Miner: One Hundred Years of
Mining in Art presents works with coal mining themes from the collection
of the National Gallery Prague as well as loaned works by
contemporary artists. It covers the period of interwar Czechoslovakia,
the Second World War, the post-war building of state socialism and the
period of “normalisation“ (the return to hardline communist policies
following the Prague Spring), as well as the post-revolutionary period
of liberal democracy associated with the decline of coal mining. The
exhibition attempts to answer two mutually related questions: What can
be learned about mining through the image it has left in art history,
and how does art history of the past hundred years appear when viewed
through the lens of mining?
This thematically focused collection
display thus does not stem from the canon of art movements and of the
most prominent art groups and figures. It shows a parallel history of
art characterised by Civilist tendencies, Objectivity and Realism, i.e.
by the art and literary movement drawing on the unadorned reality and
the almost balladic rawness of human life and social conditions
influenced by the contradictory effects of the Industrial Revolution.
This unprecedented technological and social revolution was fuelled by
the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, but at the cost of many mining
accidents, the disappearance of towns and villages, scarred landscapes
and environmental impacts, including present-day climate change caused
by human activities.
The collection display will present work by
well-known Czech artists such as Josef Čapek, Otto Gutfreund, Karel
Holan, Jiří John, Jaroslav Král, Jan Lauda, Kamil Lhoták or Jan Zrzavý,
artists tied to the mining regions of Ostrava-Karviná, Most and Kladno
regions such as Bohdan Kopecký, Ferdiš Duša, Květa Válová, Jindřich
Wielgus or Vilém Wünsche, as well as works by contemporary artists such
as Jonáš Czesaný and Karviná natives Václav Jirásek and Jakub Špaňhel.
