Ostrava - Vítkovice: Galleries, Arts

Exhibitions of paintings take place in the library on Kutuzov street in Vítkovice (www.kmo.cz), in the Peugeot gallery on Rudna street and occasionally in the town hall. Student galleries also exist at individual high schools. An exceptional gallery is located in the grammar school on Šalamounova street. It’s the first student gallery in the Czech Republic. The following information is from a CD that was issued for the 40^th anniversary of this gallery.

Dear friends of fine art,

40 years have passed since the students and teachers of our school achieved some kind of mutual understanding about the fine arts. Back in the days, the students of the ninth class wanted to decorate their classroom according to their imagination. And they found a sympathetic soul in their class master, Mr. Jiří Saidl, teacher of the Czech language and an artist, who suggested the implementation of their idea. The idea of a picture gallery composed of works from Ostrava’s artists soon exceeded the boundaries of one class. In those days I attended the fifth class and although I noticed those events, it came to me more like the echoes from the upper floor. But it was a huge event – Pioneer picture gallery, the one and only in all of Czechoslovakia.

At the opening the students sang a song conducted by Vít Láník, the unforgettable teacher of history, Czech language and literature and music. Surely the sound of his violin must have been heard there. The song was composed by Miroslav Klega, the composer from Vitkovice and the director of the Ostrava conservatory. The score has been lost, however. The son of the composer and also my colleague, Ludvík Klega, tried to hum the original melody for me a short time ago. He was coincidentally also a student of the previously mentioned ninth class. Apparently, he was so influenced by the atmosphere of those days that he became a director of documentary films. There is another celebrity among his classmates – Petr Beránek, who found himself charmed by the era of the mid-sixties. From an amateur art collector he blossomed into a professional one, and he has been the director of the Fine Art Gallery in Ostrava for several years now. He also helps in the school gallery as much as he can.

The students, along with the teachers, were supported by the old school administration, the headmistress Mrs. Marie Kalíková and her deputy Mrs. Milada Hojecká. And we cannot fail to mention the precise work of the teacher Mrs. Anna Patáková, who helped a lot during the Gallery's creation. Many unbelievable things were also achieved thanks to patrons from Vitkovice steelworks and Mr. Bohumil Štverka, the school caretaker. In the normalization period, the Gallery turned into a hall of tradition. But at its 20^th anniversary, the Gallery was restored and once more introduced by the headmistress, Mrs. Olga Rusková. The exhibition was composed of the works of young north-Moravian painters. And I may say that I was one of them.

There was an episode preceding the preparation of the Gallery’s 30^th anniversary celebration. One day, during a meal in the local canteen, I met the headmistress Mrs. Libuše Hermannova. She was very interested in the condition of the Gallery. I reviewed the exhibits and divided them into three groups according to the seriousness of the repairs to be made. And this was the beginning of my ten-year work in this school as a fine art teacher. After three month of hard work, I finally managed to revitalize the whole collection. A few days before the opening I paid a visit to my painting (fine art) mentor (and later also a colleague painter) Mr. Karel Haruda. Because his painting called “The fishnet” was no longer in the Gallery’s collection, I asked him to donate another one of his paintings as a replacement. The original painting had fallen to pieces over the course of time. And so I left with another work which went perfectly with the rest of the collection, a painting called “The Evening” created in the early sixties. During the restoration, as I was examining Tkaczyk’s painting “Still-life” embedded in a golden frame, there came a surprise. On the back side there was another, signed, painting. Subsequently, we called it the “Still-life II”. Last year marked 90 years since the school building was built - and as the building has many halls we humbly added a collection of student paintings from the 1960’s and 1970’s made under the direction of the headmaster Karel Civín. (Between 1953 and 1974 the building was shared by several schools.) The opening was on April 5, 1995.

On the occasion of the gallery’s 35^th anniversary on April 12, 2000, there was an exhibition of the IN SIGNUM fine art group, introduced by Mr. Petr Beránek, the director of the Fine Art Gallery in Ostrava. The performance of the Gejza Kollár Dance orchestra from ZUŚ of Ostrava-Vítkovice contributed to the festive atmosphere of the event.

During a ten-year period we, as a school, managed to organize many professional and amateur exhibitions that brought the gallery some new additions and provided a perfect opportunity to create and open another section of the gallery. Many thanks belong to the teachers and children from the school, to the guests from the art school of V. Perželka in Ostrava-Habrůvka, to Janáček conservatory in Ostrava, the University of Ostrava and Sokol of Vítkovice for their participation in organizing the opening. All the projects were supported by the administration of Vitkovice city-hall, not only financially, but also by the presence of mayor Mr. Petr Kutěj or the councilors. And finally, let’s not forget the sponsoring donations made by companies from Vitkovice.

K. Hercík (April 2005)