Exhibition: Dřevosen / Karel Baxa (1888–1960) – carvings and reliefs

The exhibition presents the most comprehensive selection to date of works by Karel Baxa (1888–1960), the folk woodcarver from Chudenice and author of delicate bas-reliefs and wooden figures, who worked his entire life at Býšov near Chudenice. Visitors can see works from the collections of the Dr. Hostaš Museum in Klatovy and the Josef Dobrovský Museum / Old Černín Chateau in Chudenice, the two institutions that today manage Baxa's legacy and hold roughly fifty of his carvings. The display also includes small utility objects loaned from the family estate. The exhibition brings the personality and life story of the artist closer: a war injury that prevented him from practising his original trade as a bricklayer, and the quiet, concentrated years spent working with wood, the material in which he “fixed images both exuberant and tranquil, of the kind only a dream can weave”. It also traces the sources of inspiration Baxa drew upon: from reproductions of academic painting and national icons (Mánes, Švabinský), through folk iconography (nativity scenes, St. Wolfgang, Krakonoš) to motifs of modern visual culture of the 20th century. Through all of this, Baxa creates a distinctive dialogue between folk tradition and “high” art, between centre and periphery, that reaches far beyond the region of south-west Bohemia. The exhibition is the curatorial prologue to the forthcoming monograph Karel Baxa. Dřevo, z něhož se vyrábějí sny (texts by Xavier Galmiche), which will offer the first comprehensive catalogue and a scholarly placement of the artist's work in the Czech and Central European context. The exhibition thus raises questions about the transfer of images across media, about the value of reproduction, and about how social upheavals of the 20th century are reflected in folk art.