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

The work of Adriena Šimotová (1926–2014) is rightly considered a significant value in Czech modern art. As a respected artist, she presented her work at many important collective and solo exhibitions. This time, we want to draw attention to her early work. We follow it roughly from the years 1964–1965, up to the turn of the next decade. Šimotová was then rapidly refining her artistic vision and found distinctive, enduring creative principles that have been present ever since. 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 close the selection of works in 1970, when she exhibited a collection of paintings from the previous two years with great success at Špála Gallery. Her work invites careful perception. That is precisely why we interpret it differently and expand the idea of her work with new, hitherto neglected, but important contexts.