The Václav Špála Gallery

The Václav Špála Gallery (Galerie Václava Špály) is a Prague gallery of mostly contemporary art. It is located at no. 59/30 Národní třída, in the New Town of Prague (Praha 1 – Nové Město). The gallery holds exhibitions particularly of works by living Czech professional artists of the middle generation who are among the best painters, photographers, and sculptors on the art scene today. The exhibitions regularly alternate between works of painting, photography, and sculpture.

From 1916 to 1938, the Rubeš Gallery operated at this address. In the late 1930s, the building was thoroughly remodelled for the Vilímek publishing house and bookshop and the gallery was opened in 1941 as the Galerie Jos. R. Vilímek at no. 30 Viktoriastrasse (as Národní třída was called during the German occupation), Prague. The bookshop, designed by the architect František Zelenka, was built in 1938 on the ground floor and first floor of what had originally been an Art Nouveau building.

From 1949 to 1953 (in the early years of the Communist régime), the building housed the Galerie Práce (Work Gallery), then, from 1953 to 1954, it was the home of the Galerie Kniha (Book Gallery), and, until 1959, the Galerie Českého fondu výtvarných umění (Gallery of the Czech Council for Fine Art).

Beginning in 1959, when the gallery was named after the Czech painter, graphic artist, and illustrator Václav Špála, the exhibition programme was gradually influenced by writers on art such as Eva Petrová, Jiří Šetlík, Ludmila Vachtová, and František Dvořák.

Beginning with an exhibition of works by Zbyněk Sekal in 1965, the gallery flourished under the management of the respected writer on art Jindřich Chalupecký. Under his direction, a whole generation of Czech modern artists showed their works one after another in the gallery, but, in 1969, it also held the only Prague exhibition of works by Marcel Duchamp. The last exhibition organized by Chalupecký consisted of paintings by Vladimír Kopecký in May 1970.

In the 1970s and 1980s, after the defeat of the ‘Prague Spring’ reform movement, Chalupecký was under a State ban and could not publish or be employed in his field. The gallery programme at this time was determined by the Association of Czechoslovak Fine Artists (Svaz československých výtvarných umělců), which was subservient to the régime, and the importance of the gallery declined.

Since the Velvet Revolution of late 1989, the Václav Špála Gallery has again been holding exhibitions curated by respected scholars of art, including Mahulena Nešlehová, Jiří Valoch, Marie Klimešová, Eva Petrová, Josef Kroutvor, Jan Kříž, and Ivo Janoušek, showing works of art by young new artists as well as artists of the 1960s and 1970s generations.

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