Vaclav Brozik exhibition, Arts news
Friday sees the opening of the tenth Febiofest in Prague - an international film, television, and video festival - with the premier of German director Tom Tykwer's latest movie "Heaven". Mr Tykwer, who also directed Run Lola Run, officially opens the festival in person at the Slovansky Dum multiplex cinema in the centre of Prague. The festival offers 850 screenings of 500 films. Its organiser Fero Fenic expects up to 150,000 visitors in the 27 cinemas in the cities of Prague, Brno, Ostrava, Liberec and others in Slovakia.
Febiofest opening ceremony
The closing ceremony of the Prague part of the festival on January 31st will also include an award ceremony of the Czech critics' prize Kristian for the best Czech animation, documentary and feature film of 2002. Director Roman Polanski whose movie "The pianist" will be screened at the festival will also come to Prague to receive an award for his life-long contribution to world cinema. Last but not least, Max von Sydow, the legendary actor known from Bergman's movies will also be a Febiofest guest.
Czech police recover priceless firearms from Battle of Austerlitz
Museum curators at a famous Napoleonic battlefield site gave a sigh of relief this week after police recovered a cache of stolen antique weapons. All 16 of the 200-year-old weapons, including extremely rare rifles and pistols, were discovered by police inside an abandoned house in a village in the southeastern part of the country. To Jaromir Hanak, the deputy director at the "Muzeum Brnenska" in the Moravian capital of Brno, the stolen weapons were priceless to the museum as it oversees a peace memorial on the Austerlitz battlefield site, known here in the Czech Republic as the Slavkov battlefield. The weapons were on loan from a Czech army museum and were stolen from a special international exhibit leading up to the battle's 200th anniversary in 2005.
The firearms included French, Austrian and British pieces as well as a Russian practice rifle. They were insured for 1.3 million Czech crowns (44,000 US dollars), but at least three weapons were considered priceless. The battlefield situated in what today is the southeast of the Czech Republic witnessed the 1805 Battle of Three Emperors, considered the greatest of Napoleon Bonaparte's victories. In the battle, Napoleon's French troops defeated the combined forces of the Russian and Austrian emperors.
According to Mr Hanak, the thieves apparently tried to sell the weapons to a local antique dealer. But the antique dealer refused them because the theft had been widely publicised. Later, the cache was hidden in the abandoned house. The thieves were searching for a foreign buyer when the police moved in. The Czech police say they have arrested several members of a gang linked to the July 2002 robbery as well as others across the region.
Lyricist Jiri Staidl would have turned sixty this week
And finally in today's Arts. Jiri Staidl, the famous Czech lyricist tied to the golden age of Czech 1960's popular music who suffered an early death in a car crash thirty years ago would have turned sixty this week on Thursday. Mr Staidl's work can be heard on several albums of the famous Czech singer Karel Gott and other singers such as Eva Pilarova, Vaclav Nexckar and Petr Spaleny who all enjoy much fame in the Czech Republic. He has also contributed to the soundtracks of several Czech movies and even musicals.
Japan gives National Gallery one million crowns for Asian collection
The National Gallery in Prague was given a handsome donation from the Japanese government - one million Czech crowns to help equip the gallery's depository of Japanese art. The gallery intends to use the money to improve its storage of Japanese graphics and paintings, some 6000 of which - including several pieces that are termed as unique in the international world of art - are currently in the gallery's collection. According to Helena Honcoopova who is responsible for the collection of oriental art, the Japanese government feels responsible for the preservation of Japanese art, especially in collections abroad. In 1997, for example, the gallery received 50 hand crafted wooden boxes, best suitable for the storage of Japanese books. The past years have also seen donations from Japan for the restoration of Japanese art and production of publications.
National Gallery opens exhibition of works from Vaclav Brozik
Vaclav Brozik (1851-1901) was the most popular painter of historical themes of the last three decades of the 19th century. His large paintings exhibited in Europe and the United States of America earned him world-wide fame. At the age of twenty-five he arrived in Paris; without any knowledge of French, but endowed with outstanding talent, tenacity and diligence he steadfastly went for a brilliant career. Not later than in two years he was awarded a gold medal at the Salon de Paris and married the daughter of a rich Paris art dealer. Through most of his career, he lived between Prague and Paris. In 1896 he was elected one of the "Forty Immortals" of the French Academy and a year later he was raised to the peerage by Emperor Franz Josef I. He died a few weeks after his fiftieth birthday and was buried at the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.
Last year, marked the 150th anniversary of his birth and the 100th anniversary of his death. In commemoration of these two anniversaries, the National Gallery in Prague opened an extensive exhibition of Mr Brozik's work at the Wallenstein riding school this Friday that is to run until May 4th. Originally planned to be opened last year, the National Gallery was forced to delay the opening due to the devastating floods in August. Nadezda Blazickova-Horova, is the author of the exhibition:
"A monographic exhibition such as this one, which includes all of Brozik's famous work is the first since 1928. The exhibition also includes a detailed catalogue. Up to date, all other exhibitions on Brozik have been accompanied by either short essays or a list of the exhibits on display. In our catalogue, however, we tried to put together a list of all of Brozik's work in chronological order, including a brief explanation of what each painting is depicting. I am therefore convinced that it is interesting reading material for every visitor."
According to Mrs Blazickova-Horova, the last time such an extensive exhibition was organised in Prague was some 75 years ago.
"It took several years - three to four years - to prepare the exhibition. It was based on heuristic work since not all of Brozik's paintings are in the Czech Republic. It was therefore necessary to collect all paintings that were either abroad or that we only knew from periodicals, sometimes even just from photographs. The result of our effort was some 400 processed paintings and almost twice as many drawings."
The exhibition also includes the costumes in which Brozik painted his models, some of which can actually be seen in some of the paintings exhibited. Brozik's monumental historical canvases, portraits - sometimes of life-size), Czech and French landscapes, and numerous drawings are all aprt of the exhibition
Towards the end of the 19th century, Vaclav Brozik was the most famous Czech artist in Europe. However, he continued to concentrate on historic paintings until the end of the century, despite the fact that they were no longer as popular in most European art centres where modern methods already dominated. It was not until the end of the 20th century when the interest in 19th century art increased among historians, that experts in the field realised the importance of Brozik's work in the development of the Czech and European world of art.
With this exhibition, the National Gallery hopes to continue with the success of two previous monographic exhibitions of 19th century painters Jakub Schikaneder and Julia Marak, which enjoyed over 100,000 visitors.
