Henry Moore and Czechoslovak Art after 1945

The exhibition is the second show within the international research and exhibition project, The Modern Idol: Henry Moore in the Eastern Bloc, initiated by Lujza Kotočová (VVP AVU, Prague) Alina Șerban (Institute of the Present, Bucharest) and Daniel Véri (KEMKI, Budapest). The first, eponymous exhibition took place at the National Museum of Art of Romania in 2021–22. The current exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published in Czech and English versions.

British artist Henry Moore (1898–1986) is considered a leading representative of modern sculpture whose work influenced individual artists as well as entire stylistic tendencies. Thanks to the quality of his work and a cultural and diplomatic campaign by the British Council, Moore‘s art was also widely known in Czechoslovakia and the rest of the former Eastern Bloc. Working with a detailed chronology, the exhibition explores the diplomatic framework and other mechanisms involved in the presentation and reception of Moore’s art during the Cold War. Mainly, however, it looks at his work’s influence on Czechoslovak sculpture in the second half of the 20^th century by presenting well-known and lesser-known

artists from throughout the country who were inspired by his art, who further developed the way he worked with biomorphic shapes and internal and external space, or who experimented with sculptural forms somewhere between abstraction and figuration.

For the exhibition, the gallery has managed to receive several of Henry Moore’s original works on loan. These have been installed alongside pieces by Czechoslovak sculptors reflecting a diversity of artistic positions. The nearly one hundred sculptures and works on paper have been organized into mutually interrelated groups in order to reflect the main impulses of Moore’s work while presenting Czechoslovak sculpture from a new perspective.

Curators: Lujza Kotočová, Pavlína Morganová

Expert consultants: Alina Șerban, Daniel Véri