Zbyněk Sekal — Blue Flower

The exhibition traces the drawings of sculptor Zbyněk Sekal (1923–1998), from his early figural studies to works created while in exile in Vienna, presenting drawing as an autonomous space of thought and existential experience. Alongside works from the collections of the National Gallery in Prague, the exhibition also introduces, for the first time, works on paper from the artist’s estate, bequeathed to the institution by the artist’s widow, Christine Sekal, many of which have never before been put on public display.

Drawing accompanied Zbyněk Sekal throughout his life. From raw post-war works and expressive portraits shaped by his experience of the Mauthausen concentration camp, through Surrealist experiments and imaginatively charged compositions marked by existential unease, to late drawings capturing the organic structures of plant imprints, the recurring theme is that of the individual confronting transformation, uncertainty, and the search for identity.

The concept of the exhibition is symbolically anchored in the motif of the blue flower from the unfinished novel by the German Romantic poet Novalis. This emblem of the longing for knowledge and the unattainable union with the absolute serves here as a metaphor for Sekal’s drawing itself. Just as Novalis’s wanderer seeks a deeper meaning of life through the image of the blue flower, so Sekal’s drawing becomes an expression of introspection, a trace of his ongoing interrogation of human existence and its place in the world.

Curator: Adriana Šmejkalová

Exhibition catalogue: Adriana Šmejkalová, Zbyněk Sekal, Drawings and tempera, exhibition catalogue Zbyněk Sekal – Blue Flower, National Gallery in Prague, September 2026

Venue: The Graphic Arts Cabinet at 2nd floor of the Trade Fair Palace as part of the pernament exhibition 1939–2021: The End of the Black-and-White Era