Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region (, abbreviated GASK) is an art gallery in Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. It is located in a renovated Baroque building that used to be a Jesuit College. GASK is the successor to the Czech Museum of Fine Arts in Prague. It cares for nearly 10,000 collection items (paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, photographs and works of so-called new media). Gallery collections include about 3,000 paintings, 600 sculptures, 2,000 drawings, and 3,000 prints. Since 2009, it has been a subsidized organization of the Central Bohemian Region.
The Central Bohemian Gallery was established in 1964 as a spin-off from the Centre for State Heritage Preservation and Nature Protection of the Central Bohemian Region (SSPPOPSK) and until 1971 had a permanent exhibition at the Nelahozeves Castle. Since its foundation, it has focused primarily on 20th and 21st century fine arts. From 1971 to 2009, it was housed in three renovated medieval houses at Husova street 19–21, Prague 1. From 1993, it operated under the new name Czech Museum of Fine Arts in Prague in order to distance itself from the period of normalization, which meant an interruption in its development and the ideological destruction of its original concept. At that time, the gallery did not have suitable premises for presenting its collections and exhibited, among other places, at Karolinum and House of the Black Madonna. In 1998, it acquired the Jesuit College in Kutná Hora as its future location, and in 2001, its administration was transferred from the Ministry of Culture back to the Central Bohemian Region. After moving to Kutná Hora, it changed its name to the Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region (GASK).
History of the gallery Post-war restoration of regions in Czechoslovakia from 1 January 1949 enabled the creation of a system of regional galleries. At that time, the Prague Region included the capital city of Prague and the Central Bohemian Region, and according to a ministerial directive from 1952, the relevant gallery was the National Gallery Prague. The Central Bohemian Region was thus the only region without its own gallery institution. This could only be established after the reorganization of the state administration in 1960, when the separate Central Bohemian Region was established.
1960–1971 The oldest part of the collection was purchased between 1960 and 1963 by the Central Bohemian Heritage Preservation Centre, which had set up a working group to prepare the establishment of a future gallery. The secretary of the purchasing commission at that time was historian Miloš Suchomel, and art historian Miroslav Lamač (chairman of the commission from 1961 to 1962) was a member of the commission on behalf of the Union of Czechoslovak Artists. Both were instrumental in purchasing works by important pre-war modernist artists, especially Osma art group (Emil Filla, Bohumil Kubišta and others), Tvrdošíjní (Josef Čapek, Václav Špála, Jan Zrzavý and others), the Group 42, and the Surrealists. Miloš Suchomel also promoted the purchase of old art and, together with his colleague Olga Preisnerová, visited the studios of artists whom the communist regime considered undesirable. He thus had a lasting influence on the character of the collection and, despite the Communist party guidelines in force in the 1950s and the opinions of regime officials on the commission, whose task was to oversee the ideological correctness of art, he pushed through the purchase of some works of modern art. By 1963, the composition of the purchasing commission had changed and it was possible to purchase works by some of the most important young artists of 1960s. In 1963, the collection was expanded to include a relatively high-quality set of works that had been discarded from the National Gallery's collections on the orders of the Ministry of Culture as inferior or politically problematic.
In 1963, Miloš Suchomel and his colleagues prepared several exhibition projects in cultural centres, and at his initiative, the Central Bohemian Regional Committee separated the Central Bohemian Gallery from the SSPPOPSK in December 1963 as an independent fiscal organizationDagmar Jelínková, From the Central Bohemian Gallery to GASK, Ateliér No. 18, 2010, pp. 2, 6 Its collections were originally supposed to be installed at Konopiště or at the castles in Mělník or Lysá nad Labem. The decision to place the exhibition at the Nelahozeves Castle was made just before the gallery was founded at the end of 1963. The castle was transferred to the administration of the Central Bohemian Gallery in 1967 in a state of disrepair and was continuously renovated until 1992. It served as a depository, and the gradually expanded exhibition spaces made it possible to display virtually all newly acquired works. Until 1971, the gallery's administrative headquarters were located in the building of the Central Bohemian KNV in Prague.
Miloš Suchomel was appointed director in January 1964 and presented his concept for a planned exhibition of modern art in Nelahozeves at the first meeting of the purchasing committee in May 1964. Due to the planned exhibition of Robert Piesen, whose paintings seemed "too abstract and incomprehensible" to the censorship authority and then to the approving Department of Education and Culture, Miloš Suchomel was dismissed in July of the same year after seven months in office and the exhibition was canceled.
Jiří Kohoutek worked at the Central Bohemian Gallery from 1963 as a specialist in the SSPPOPSK gallery group and curator of the first exhibitions (Otto Gutfreund, Jaroslav Vožniak). He was appointed director after Miloš Suchomel and became the author of the first permanent exhibition of Czech modern art, opened in 1964 at the castle in Nelahozeves. During Jiří Kohoutek's tenure, the Central Bohemian Gallery intensively built up its collection of Czech modern art between 1964 and 1971, which complemented the exhibition. The director's expert advisor was art historian Antonín Hartmann, who knew many of the artists personally. From 1964 to 1966, Jindřich Chalupecký was the chairman of the purchasing committee, and in the 1960s, Josef Hlaváček, Jaromír Zemina and Zdeněk Palcr were also members of the committee. Thanks to a more favorable political atmosphere, relative freedom of choice, and a solid financial foundation, over 1,500 works of art were purchased between 1964 and 1967. The purchasing committee met twice a year and even pushed through works by artists that the previous committee had not recommended. The core of the collection consisted of high-quality works of surrealist and imaginative art purchased in the 1960s from private collections. Until 1966, when the National Gallery reinstalled its modern collections, this exhibition was the largest presentation of Czech post-war art. Director Jiří Kohoutek had to face constant political pressure from Regional National Council officials, who in 1966, after inspecting the exhibition of the Central Bohemian Gallery's modern art collection, proposed his dismissal.
According to a resolution of the Communist party's Ideological Commission in 1965, the Central Bohemian Gallery's collection was to be divided into several specialized exhibitions at Křivoklát Castle (medieval art), Mělník Castle (Renaissance and Baroque art), and Nelahozeves Castle (modern art). During the 1960s, permanent exhibition spaces were also established under the administration of the Central Bohemian Gallery in Mladá Boleslav, Kolín, Kladno, and Příbram, and memorial exhibitions were created for Zdenek Rykr and Rudolf Kremlička in Kolín, Václav Rabas in Rakovník and Georges Kars in Velvary. In 1969, the Central Bohemian Gallery's modern art exhibition occupied two floors of the castle in Nelahozeves and, together with the installation in the South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou, became the largest regional gallery of 20th-century Czechoslovak art. The castle was not equipped for year-round operation, and the exhibition was only open from May to October.
The Lidice Collection, which was created from donations by foreign artists and transferred to the Central Bohemian Gallery in 1967, was also temporarily stored in Nelahozeves. At the end of the 1960s, it comprised 350 works, including donations from Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, and Sigmar Polke. A separate building was to be constructed for it directly in Lidice. An architectural competition, announced in 1968, selected the project by architect Vladimír Langer, but the construction of the gallery was ultimately halted in 1970, and the collection was temporarily exhibited in Nelahozeves. In 2003, the collection was returned to Lidice. In 2002–2003, the cultural centre in Lidice was adapted for the Lidice Collection.
For its administrative headquarters and new exhibition spaces, the Central Bohemian Gallery purchased and, since 1969, renovated three medieval houses on Husova Street in Prague.
1970–1989 After the soviet occupation in August 1968, a harsh period of normalization began. In 1970 the new purchasing commission refused to approve the purchase of certain works. Delegates to the 14th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1971 agreed that the gallery's conceptual focus on 20th-century art was inappropriate. Director Jiří Kohoutek, who refused to comply with the party directive and reevaluate the exhibition from "new ideological and political perspectives" (works by artists who emigrated after the occupation remained on display), was dismissed on 1 December 1971, prior to the opening of the newly renovated headquarters of the Central Bohemian Gallery on Husova Street in Prague. In his place, the already "consolidated" Union of Artists appointed the painter Vladimír Brehovszký as director and, as his deputy, Jiří M. Boháč. Both rejected the previous concept of the gallery, reinstalled the exhibition in Nelahozeves, and, with the aim of "completing the profile of the socialist man,"V. Brehovszký, Central Bohemian Gallery, Co vás zajímá magazine, 1972 reevaluated the history of Czech art in favor of realistic tendencies. In the modern art exhibition, a special section was reserved for "artworks reflecting human drama, the fight against fascism, neocolonialism, and anti-humanism."
The purchasing committee continued to favor consistent realism, regional artists, and strong social engagement on the part of creators—most of whom were members of the Communist party. Just one month after taking office, Brehovszký made an extraordinary purchase worth 180,660 Czechoslovak crowns, including landscapes by Eduard Stavinoha, "The Wounded" by Arnošt Paderlík, "Victorious Youth" and "Red Army Soldiers" by Antonín Kalvoda, "Woman from the Market" and "Partisan" by Rudolf Svoboda, and portrait sculptures by Miroslav Pangrác. Support for socially engaged art had concrete results in the exhibition projects "Lidice 1942–1972" at Mánes (1972), "Contemporary Realistic Tendencies in the Visual Arts of Central Bohemia" (1973) and "Greeting from the Central Bohemian Gallery to Soviet Airmen" (Milovice, 1975). During Brehovszký's tenure, the "Lidice Collection" was exhibited in Nelahozeves, which, after the exhibition in Mánes and the "annual art project on the theme of Lidice" (1974), was supplemented with selected works by Czech pro-regime artists.