Land of my heart - MGP Prostějov
04/07/2024Dear friends, everything is being prepared and you will see a completely new exhibition collection, which we have prepared together with the team of the Museum and Gallery in Prostějov.
The opening will take place on July 4 in the presence of great musicians Zuzana Lapčíková - dulcimer and Vladislav Bláha - guitar, and we will also present a new catalog for the exhibition.
The exhibition will last until October 6, 2024, and we believe that you will enjoy the visit and find time to meet the painter Antonín Vojtek, who is looking forward to seeing you.
Dear visitors,
I would like to welcome you to the opening of Antonín Vojtek's paintings under the wings of ninety white birds. This motif was chosen as the main installation element accompanying the artist's jubilee exhibitions in 2024 at the MMG in Břeclav and also here at the Museum and Gallery in Prostějov. Ninety silhouettes were made for this occasion, which refer to each year of the painter's life, symbolize his long life and artistic journey and accompany the visitor through the exhibition. Antonín Vojtek's painting Memory of Pálava (from 2017) served as a model.
The motif of flying is intertwined with practically the entire work of the painter Antonín Vojtek. Despite cosmic abstract visions and enthusiasm for conquering space, the artist returns to Earth, back to the bosom of his native South Moravian country. It captures her as if she were frozen in time. Lakes, ponds, alluvial forests, fields... All this hides a thriving life, but it is below the surface. The viewer can only guess it, can vividly imagine all the insects and other animals hidden in the abundant vegetation.
The painter put it in his paintings without directly capturing everything descriptively with his brush. However, his paintings undoubtedly include birds from the animal kingdom. Herons, storks, geese, gulls, kingfishers and quacks bring life to the pictures. They are often also a symbol, a reflection of human destinies. Flocks of white migratory birds represent a long journey that the artist has already traveled, but they also refer to a higher order prevailing not only in the landscape itself, but also in the entire universe. It is a never-ending cycle of departures and returns. The birds in the paintings often symbolize farewell, farewell to his beloved Podpálav landscape, hidden for decades now under the silent surface of the waterworks. It is a subject to which he constantly returns, as we can see, for example, in the painting Loučení (from 2024), which you can see right in this hall - the large flock of white birds that last circled around the Musov church in Loučeni can also be understood as a representation of human souls who had to leave their home. Many have already been swallowed up by water, many have already been swallowed up by time. But the omnipresent eyes of the landscape and the eyes of the painter remained.
The artist often looks at the landscape from a vantage point, as if he were floating above it. Other times, through the dense vegetation of the floodplain forest, it longingly looks up to the heavens. The painter Antonín Vojtek had and still has his wings. He dreamed of flying from an early age. At first he climbed trees as nimbly as a squirrel, later he learned to fly on a bagel and thanks to books and his imagination he reached the stars. He dreamed of flying, because flying represented freedom, the possibility of choice. He realized that art is the right path to freedom for him. He found a way to be true to himself and his country, and he still enjoys that flight. For him, each painting is a challenge, a new adventure, a new path. As he himself once said: "My hands are my wings!"
Julie Vojtková 2024