Arts | All stories

In this week’s Arts, my guest is Welsh writer James Stafford, the author of a wonderfully irreverent new webcomic The Sorrowful Putto of Prague. The comic tells the story of a 400-year-old putto (or cherub) named Xavier living in the city and it has captured the attention of both Czech and English-language readers. After looking up the site myself, I was curious to learn more about Xavier and his world. Luckily James Stafford – who is not usually based in Prague – was able to come to the studio to discuss the project.

The Semafor theatre, one of the oldest continuous traditions of modern Czech entertainment, is still putting out new performances after 53 years of existence. The latest concoction of multi-genre comedy theatre is ‘Kam se poděla Valerie?’, or ‘Where Did Valerie Go?’, which has four pre-premieres this week and next, before the real premiere in September.

Tim Smisek is an American singer and songwriter living in Prague. He regularly performs at Restaurant Anna and various other venues in the Czech capital. For this week’s edition of the Arts Tim visited Radio Prague’s studio to talk about his music, plans for the future and work on a new album. Lorna Stephen began by asking him how he came to live in Prague.

This January, a number of theater and dance troupes from the Czech Republic participated in an annual international APAP performing arts festival in New York City. The Czech Centre in New York hosted all of the Czech performances this year, for the second year in a row, at their Bohemian Hall space in Manhattan. In this week’s Arts, we spoke to the director of the Czech Centre in New York, Pavla Niklová, about organizing the performances for APAP, how some of the pieces resonated with a New York audience, and what Czech theater companies can bring

In today’s edition of the Arts we meet American scholar Kathi Diamant, who has spent years researching and writing about her namesake – Dora Diamant. Dora was a Polish émigré living in Berlin when she met Czech writer Franz Kafka for the first time in 1923. She became the great novelist’s last lover – spending the final eleven months of his life with him in a shared Berlin flat. Kathi Diamant has just written a book about Dora, titled ‘Kafka’s Last Love’. She spoke to Radio Prague’s Anna Kubišta about how she originally became interested in the

The Czech National Gallery is currently hosting a highly publicized exhibit of a selection of works by the famous Czech artist from the first half of the twentieth century – František Kupka. “The road to Amorpha” traces the way the artist’s work evolved from figurative to abstract representation. Radio Prague spoke to the National Gallery’s director Vladimír Rösel and asked him how international institutions were involved in the creation of the exhibition.

Public broadcaster Czech TV this week will launch the first of several new documentary series that fall under the heading of docusoap. The format, well-known to audiences in Great Britain, for example, but less familiar here, focuses on real and personal stories as drama and entertainment. Entitled Čtyři v tom (which could be loosely translated as Four Buns in the Oven) the series was co-directed by filmmaker Linda Kallistová Jablonská (whose previous films includes a documentary about young communists and conservatives) and Zuzana Špidlová (recognised

Young Czech designer Jan Čtvrtník has worked for some of the best-known names in the industry, from domestic firm Moser to IKEA and Electrolux. He has just won an illustrious Droog award for a vase highlighting the issue of climate change, which also attracted the attention of British design guru Marcus Fairs. He has studied in Sweden and spent part of his schooling at NASA HQ in Houston, Texas. He now lives and works in Italy. During a brief trip back to the Czech Republic, I caught up with Jan Čtvrtník in a bustling Prague café. As someone who

It was almost two years ago that then-fresh graduate Nina Mainerová set out with a colleague to open a professional architectural studio. But soon after their launch, the bills piled up and they were forced to modify their plans. First, they began offering preparatory classes for students applying to university; then they extended their workshops to include drawing and painting.

This week the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague launched a new exhibition highlighting the fascinating history of the Matchbox brand – the famous die-cast toy cars. Matchbox and similar toy cars, traditionally referred to in Czech as Angličáci, have long proven popular here and there is no question the show will be a hit with families as well as collectors.