Landscapes seen | Through the eyes of Karel Hynek Mácha

The beginning of the 19th century brings new ideas into Czech culture, a new philosophy that seeks to turn the individual’s gaze inward. It arrives in the form of the figure of a torn wanderer standing above an abyss, gazing dreamily into the distance to which he may one day arrive, contemplating the meaning of life and the significance of the individual within its cycle. What does the wanderer see? Weary of the Industrial Revolution, of human progress, of Enlightenment thought, he turns his gaze back into his soul, into the landscape both inner and outer, into an intimate experience, into a connection with nature, the land, the homeland, and history. Exactly as the German painter Caspar David Friedrich depicted him around 1818 in his painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.

The wanderer whose footsteps we will follow is the Czech poet Karel Hynek Mácha. A genius who, during his short and turbulent life, managed to become a pioneer of Czech poetry and a source of inspiration for generations of poets and wanderers who sought to follow his path through the landscape and through literature. In 2026, it will be 190 years since his death.

A wanderer who travelled across his entire homeland before daring to undertake an even more distant journey. In just six weeks, he walked through Innsbruck all the way to the Italian city of Venice. A poet who, in his most famous work, the epic poem May, retold a folk legend capturing love, passion, hatred, and fear, and through this allegory praised the beauty of his homeland — the land that became, in the poet’s own words, his “cradle and grave.” It remains an eternal testimony to the love of life and the bond with nature. Through language and poetic turns of phrase, Mácha paints a picture in all the colours of the sunset.

The journey through the exhibition will offer “Mácha-inspired landscapes” created by both renowned and lesser-known artists of the Romantic period. Works by major figures such as Julius Mařák, Antonín and Josef Mánes, Bedřich August Piepenhagen, and many others will be on display. Their romantic forest scenes, castle ruins, and wanderers in the landscape captivate with their mysterious atmosphere and the authenticity of a deeply personal inner experience. Walking through the exhibition in the footsteps of Karel Hynek Mácha will be a journey through the landscape of the 19th century.

The exhibition also features works by four contemporary artists—Filip Dvořák, Tomáš Hrůza, Aleš Novák, and Miloš Šejn—whose artistic practice follows in the footsteps of the Romantic wanderers of the 19th century. Visitors thus have the opportunity to compare how the perception of landscape has evolved over time.