Václav Žák - Pábitel

Annotation

The exhibition of works of Václav Žák (1906–1986) is a reminder of a forgotten but important personality of Czech unschooled, marginal, or naive art. A pure outsider with a peculiarly imaginative expression, reflected in numerous series of underpaintings on glass as well as in the extensive expressive decoration of the interior and exterior of his house, Žák soon after his early works (1952) captured the attention of the Prague cultural elite of the 1960s. Apart from painters ( Jaroslav Paur, Karel Souček, Richard Fremund) and photographers (Eva Fuková, Václav Chochola), it was above all the writer Bohumil Hrabal who, in his short story Bambini di Praga 1947, included the peculiar figure of the handicapped painter among the characteristic figures of the socalled „pábitelé“. The extensive book of short stories was published in 1964 and a year later the story of an extraordinary painter was brilliantly translated into a film by the director Evald Schorm in the film “House of Joy”. Václav Žák, a skin collector, played himself in the film, as can be seen in the screening of an excerpt from the film at the exhibition.

The present exhibition, curated by Pavel Konečný and Zuzana Krišková, consists of a selection of several dozen paintings by Václav Žák, preserved in the Melichar Museum of Homeland History in Unhošt’, paintings on loan from the collection of the North Bohemian Gallery of Fine Arts in Litoměřice and from three private collections. An integral part of the exhibition are also documentary photographs by Eva Fuková and Václav Chochola, capturing both the magic environment of the artist and some of the cultural personalities with whom he was friends. The exhibition at the Václav Chad Gallery in Zlín, the first one in many years since his departure, is accompanied by a catalogue with three texts by the authors (Zuzana Krišková, Miroslav Oliverius, Pavel Konečný) presenting not only the biography of the artist, but also the specific poetics of his works and the reasons leading to the rediscovery of his work by the contemporary cultural scene.