The Ostrava Gallery has prepared an exhibition dedicated to Vlastislav Hofman

Ostrava - The Ostrava Gallery of Fine Arts has prepared an exhibition dedicated to the work of architect, painter, and designer Vlastislav Hofman, who designed, for example, the building of the cubo-expressionist crematorium in Moravian Ostrava and won a gold medal at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art in Paris in 1925. The exhibition will be on view at the House of Art from today until January 7, 2018. Kateřina Mertha, the gallery spokesperson, told ČTK.

"Hofman was primarily an architect. His relationship with avant-garde movements, however, permeated his painting, graphic, scenographic, and design work," Mertha said. She added that the exhibition, which the gallery prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Art History, will present this artistic personality in full scope. The exhibit follows Hofman's retrospective exhibition that took place in the same gallery in 2004. It is currently divided into four sections - architecture, urbanism, design, and applied art, which includes paintings, graphics, and scenographic works.

Famous works by the artist will be on display. For example, the painting Children from 1920 or the watercolor Bohumil Kubišta from two years earlier. Several exhibits will have their exhibition premiere. For instance, a cubist cemetery lamp designed in 1913 and 1914, an inkwell designed around 1920, or a small table from 1910. "We will also exhibit a number of matrices for graphic prints, pastels of God's Pain and the Jizera Mountains from Harrachov. Additionally, scenographic designs that we have acquired from private collections," the spokesperson added.

For the very first time, project documentation of the now-nonexistent crematorium in Moravian Ostrava will be displayed. "The building still evokes emotional responses from the professional public and witnesses. Architects are still interested in its exact form. Only a few photographs have survived," said one of the exhibition curators, Petr Gába.