National Gallery Prague exhibits works by Czech artists from interwar Paris

PRAGUE - National Gallery Prague (NGP) organized an exhibition "École de Paris: Artists from Bohemia and Interwar Paris", which focuses on an important, but so far less mapped chapter of Czech art in France. The exhibition is on display at the Wallenstein Riding School in the Lesser Town until 2 March 2025. It introduces visitors to artists who were better known in interwar Paris than in their homeland, such as Georges Kars, Othon Coubine and François Eberl (born Jiří Karpeles, Otakar Kubín and František Eberl). Eberl's works will be exhibited in Prague for the first time.

According to curator Anna Pravdová, the exhibition will take visitors to the Parisian art scene of the 1920s and 1930s. "Although the names of František Kupka, Josef Šíma, Jindřich Štyrský and Toyen are today most often associated with Czech art in France, the Parisian public of the time had completely different favourites. Kars, Coubine and Eberl were much better known and were exhibited in the most prestigious galleries and had monographs published. In this exhibition, we will revisit their art and present it to the Czech public in the broader context of the Paris School."

In addition to the works of these three key artists, the exhibition also features works by their contemporaries, including world-famous names such as Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Suzanne Valadon, Chaïm Soutine, Jules Pascin, Chana Orloff and Maurice Utrillo. And there is also the photographer of Paris at night Brassaï.

Visitors also have the unique opportunity to see paintings that have never been exhibited before, including Coubin's works recently discovered in American collections, which are returning to Europe for the first time. In total, nearly two hundred and seventy works are on display, including books and prints. The works are on loan from prestigious European museums (such as the Musée d'art Moderne de Paris, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, the Musée de Montmartre and the Musée de Grenoble), from the most important Czech public galleries and from a number of foreign and domestic private collections; thirty-one works come from the NGP's collections.

The Fates of Artists

The stories of all three artists are intertwined with the dramatic fates of Europe during the last century, as they came to France before the First World War. Kars was a Czech German of Jewish origin who fought on the side of Austria-Hungary during the war. Eberl joined the Czechoslovak legions in France, was seriously wounded and later worked as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. Coubin and his wife were first interned in a foreigners' camp near Bordeaux during the First World War, then worked in the National Library and participated in the resistance activities of the Czechoslovak colony in Paris.

After the war, all three met in Paris and their realistic figurative painting was unprecedentedly successful there.

During the Second World War, Kars first hid in France and later crossed the border to Switzerland under rather dramatic circumstances, where he lived with his sister near Zurich. Nervously exhausted, he committed suicide in February 1945. Eberl briefly joined the French Resistance. In the post-war period he often stayed in Monaco, where he later received honorary citizenship. He died in France in the early 1960s. Coubine returned home in the 1950s, lived alternately in Prague and in his native Boskovice, and became a meritorious artist. After thirteen years he headed back to France and spent the last years of his life in Provence.

NGP/Gnews.cz - HeK