Arts | All stories

It’s no secret that American writer Robert Fulghum loves the Czech Republic and that his books, published by Argo, have proven immensely popular here. He has been back at least ten times over the years to promote his work, from his famous All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten to his latest, Memories of One Adventure.

My guest in today’s Arts is violinist Josef Špaček, who has emerged as one of the Czech Republic’s most talented virtuosos. Špaček – a graduate from the Juilliard School – is a concertmaster with the Czech Philharmonic and in less than a fortnight he will be performing at the Prague Spring International Music Festival. He has also just released his debut CD with recordings of Prokofiev, Janáček and Smetana.

The Czech Photo Gallery at Prague’s Újezd this week launched the first in a series of “Best of” exhibitions beginning with the Nude. Curators for the opening show chose work by five well-known photographers, the late Taras Kuščynskyj, Jan Saudek, Robert Vano, Pavel Brunclík and Antonín Tesař. The nudes range from lyrical and romantic, to erotic and homoerotic, and relatively brutal and decadent.

In this week’s Arts I talk to Jitka Hanušová of Art for People, collaborating on an upcoming exhibition at the GASK Gallery in Kutná Hora, central Bohemia. The show, entitled “Venice - the Eternal Dream”, opens next week, featuring work by Italian photographer Maria Pia Severi and Venetian Carnevale masks from the traditional Pietro Longhi atelier.

In this week’s Arts my guest is New York-based landscape architect Martin Barry who last year launched a new festival and conference in Prague called reSITE, focussing on urbanism and rethinking the public space. To this aim, he and organisers involved everyone from internationally recognised designers and urban planners, to students of arts and architecture, and last, but not least, politicians.

Nika Kupyrova has traversed Europe from East to West and back. Born in Ukraine and having grown up in Prague, she went on to study art in Edinburgh and Iceland. Now Nika lives and works in Vienna, and partly in Prague, creating installations and photographs of dream-like creatures and spaces. Currently, the young artist has an installation at the Windows Gallery in Vienna - the new art space of the Czech Center in Austria.

This week we have a roundup of cultural stories making headlines: an exhibition dedicated to Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen, a new musical inspired by the rock band Lucie, and the completion of the AZ Tower - the country's tallest building.

An exhibition called Signals from the Unknown is on now at the DOX Gallery in Prague, allowing visitors to learn about the fascinating history of Czech comics – from the year 1922 to the present.

The Febiofest film festival, in its 20th year, began on Thursday evening; this year the festival promises 200 film screenings and the attendance of internationally-recognised stars like Geraldine Chaplin (perhaps best known for her work with Carlos Saura) and Giancarlo Giannini many fans will recognise from films like Casino Royale.

South Korea’s National Museum of Contemporary Art is currently putting on a large-scale showcase of Czech modern art. The exhibit 'Memory of Landscape I have never seen’ is a result of three years of collaboration between Prague and Seoul and presents works of Czech painters from the Czech National Gallery, ranging from 1895 until 1943. I spoke to the National Gallery’s director Vladimir Rösel and asked him how the cooperation with the Korean museum developed.