Bedřich Dlouhý at Museum Montanelli: exceptional works from the museum’s own collection
Museum Montanelli presents the work of Bedřich Dlouhý, one of the most distinctive figures of Czech post-war art. The paintings and objects come from Museum Montanelli’s own collection. They offer visitors the opportunity to encounter the work of an artist whose original visual language combines precise painting, imagination, symbolism, and a distinctive irony.
Unlike academically and systematically arranged chronological exhibitions, the museum this time focuses instead on the memory of past encounters with Bedřich Dlouhý, on the atmosphere of the space in dialogue with the exhibited work, and leads the viewer to a completely unexpected place where Bedřich Dlouhý spent his creative life — his own studio.
Bedřich Dlouhý, associated with the Šmidrové group, developed a distinctive approach to painting throughout his life. In his works he combined realistically rendered details with surprising connections, creating pictorial worlds in which the everyday transforms into a spectacle both unsettling and poetic.
The exhibited work raises questions of identity, memory, and the relationship between reality and its artistic interpretation. It invites the viewer to look closely and to discover meanings that gradually reveal themselves beneath the surface of the painting.
By presenting works from its own collection Museum Montanelli highlights the importance of the long-term care of Czech visual art and of making major works of art accessible to the public.
Curator: Dadja Altenburg Kohl
Special thanks to Petr Piskáček
