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December 13, 2019 - April 12, 2020
The Regional Museum and Gallery in Most cordially invites you to a exhibition that also opens new gallery spaces built with financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Ústí Region.
A guided tour with the daughter of Josef Honys - PhDr. Daniela Radecký is prepared for the exhibition on March 19, 2020 at 5 PM.
The exhibition is located in the new gallery spaces of the Regional Museum and Gallery in Most (Czechoslovak Army Street 1360)
Open daily except Mondays from 12:00 – 18:00, Sat – Sun and holidays from 10:00 – 18:00, closed on December 24 and December 31, 2019. Admission: 30 CZK full (adults) / 15 CZK reduced (students and seniors).
Exhibition Josef Honys - Painter and Poet will last from December 13, 2019 to April 12, 2020.
JOSEF HONYS – PAINTER AND POET (1919–1969)
The Regional Museum and Gallery in Most has prepared an exhibition dedicated to the work of the visual artist and experimental poet Josef Honys (1919–1969) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth and the 50th anniversary of his death, who lived in nearby Teplice. The exhibition will be installed in the new gallery spaces in the main building of the museum. Its realization was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
The work of Josef Honys became an important turning point in Czech art and a natural reaction to socialist realism. During his short life, the author achieved success on the international scene (Trieste, Venice, Paris, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Antwerp, La Plata); his works are represented in foreign collections, but remain little known in the domestic environment. Through the exhibition, we would like to present to a wide professional and lay audience the life story and work of an author who resisted the communist regime and around whose premature tragic death in 1969 there are still questions today. His work was appreciated abroad, but at home it was long misunderstood and rejected. A significant part of it was even irretrievably destroyed in 1962 during a "break-in" at his studio, similar to other works later during the family's eviction from their home in Teplice in 1983.
Despite the adversities, Josef Honys did not give up and continued to create intensely. The beginnings of his work can be found in the second half of the 1930s when he, along with his classmate Josef Hiršal and Jan Fejfar, founded a "surrealist circle" that collaborated with the Prague surrealist group. They were enchanted by poem-paintings, fascinated by futurism and dadaism, and familiarized themselves with constructivism, poetism, suprematism, and other "-isms." Under these influences, Josef Honys began writing automatic texts, recording so-called hypnagogic visions, creating poem-drawings, and collages. Later, from the end of the 1940s, he began to develop these themes in oil on cardboard or canvas.
In 1947, he attempted to establish a new avant-garde group focused on instinctive poetry and instinctive art. He constantly followed developments in the field, met with friends in Prague, attended exhibitions, corresponded with various representatives of the foreign avant-garde (Ellena Pelli, Helmut Heissenbüttel, Julien Blain, J. F. Bory), and sent his works to various events. He closely collaborated and befriended not only Josef Hiršal but also Bohumila Grögerová, Ladislav Novák, Emil Juliš, Jindřich Procházka, Ladislav Nebeský, Jiří Valoch, and Jiří Kolář. In the 1960s, when there was a political thaw in Czechoslovakia, he became a member of the Křižovatka group and in 1968 also participated in the exhibition New Sensitivity at the Mánes Gallery. He regularly published in magazines Dialog, Sešity pro literaturu a diskusi, Host do domu. In addition to collages, paintings, and assemblages, he created series and visual poems, using various types of quasi-writing. Throughout his creative life, he sought and attempted a new approach to expressing the experience of the world and the state of man in both literary and visual creation.
Like other artists, Josef Honys sought to capture a distinctive expression of himself in both visual and literary forms. His work is characterized by authenticity and a quest for striking originality. He was not afraid to experiment and constantly sought new paths. His contributions are primarily in series and quasi-writing. Art provided him with freedom of expression, spontaneity, and irrationality. His work transcends traditional artistic disciplines and encompasses a whole spectrum of ideas and artistic procedures responding to current global movements, which he develops in a distinctive way. The exhibition will present a cross-section of his work from early surrealist pieces to works that we classify as informal and lettrist. In addition to paintings, assemblages, collages, series, drawings, and visual poetry will also be exhibited. The exhibition will be complemented by photographs from the private archive of the family and personal belongings of the artist.
A self-service art workshop is available where visitors can create inspired by the artworks of Josef Honys.
The exhibition was prepared in collaboration with the Gallery of Fine Arts in Havlíčkův Brod. A publication titled Josef Honys, Memories of the Painter and Poet, published by GVU in Havlíčkův Brod with financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, will be available for purchase at the exhibition.
The curators of the exhibition are Jitka Šrejberová and Adam Hnojil.
ACCOMPANYING PROGRAM TO THE EXHIBITION
Guided tours of the exhibition with the daughter of Josef Honys PhDr. Daniela Radecký
Thursday, March 19, 2020, at 5 PM.
Thank you for your cooperation: