Adriena Šimotová, The Joy of Life. Painting and Graphic Works 1963-1970

The work of Adriena Šimotová (1926–2014) is rightly considered a significant value of Czech modern art. As a respected artist, she presented herself at many important collective and solo exhibitions. This time, we want to draw attention to her early work. We follow it roughly from 1964–1965, up to the turn of the next decade. Šimotová quickly refined her artistic vision then and found distinctive, enduring creative principles. These include above all the courage not to succumb to the dictates of current opinion, energy, rejection of stereotypes, and the development of themes of intimacy and corporeality. She was experiencing a happy period then – in her personal life and in the intensity of the cultural environment, which brought her inspiring impulses. As she later noted: “…we all thought we still had tomorrow ahead of us.” For this reason, we deliberately conclude the selection of works in 1970, when she successfully exhibited a collection of paintings from the last two years at Špálova galerie. Her work encourages attentive perception. That is why we interpret it differently and expand the understanding of her work with new, previously overlooked, yet important contexts.