The opening will take place on Tuesday 7 June at 5 p.m. 

The life and work of the painter František Podešva are closely associated with the magical landscape around the mountain community of Soláň, where he lived from the end of the 1930s onwards. He settled there, in the land of his ancestors, after studying art in Prague, travelling to Paris on a scholarship to study with František Kupka, as well as undertaking numerous international trips and becoming an active member of the art scenes in Prague and Brno – where he exhibited widely and was a member of various artists’ associations. The main themes of Podešva’s work were the beautiful landscapes of Soláň and the hard yet pure life of its people; his paintings and graphic cycles are saturated with the earthy lyricism of the Wallachian region. Soláň was also where he enjoyed his happy marriage to the writer Marie Podešvová. The hills and valleys of the area were sometimes known as “the Wallachian Barbizon”.

František Podešva can be considered the doyen of the artists who were drawn as if by a powerful fate to Soláň – a place that one poet dubbed “the trampoline of the gods”. Other painters who worked in the region included Alois Schneiderka, Karel Hofman and Jan Kobzáň.

Curator: Jiří Jůza, Gabriela Pelikánová
Text: Jiří Jůza
Translation: Christopher Hopkinson
Graphic design: Katarína Jamrišková
Promotion: Jana Malášek Šrubařová, Magdaléna Staňková