Václav Špála Gallery
The Václav Špála Gallery (Galerie Václava Špály) is a Prague gallery of mostly contemporary art. It is located at no. 59/30 Národní třída, in the New Town of Prague (Praha 1 – Nové Město). The gallery holds exhibitions particularly of works by living Czech professional artists of the middle generation who are among the best painters, photographers, and sculptors on the art scene today. The exhibitions regularly alternate between works of painting, photography, and sculpture. History. From 1916 to 1938, the Rubeš Gallery operated at this address. In the late 1930s, the building was thoroughly remodelled for the  Vilímek publishing house and bookshop and the gallery was opened in 1941 as the Galerie Jos. R. Vilímek at no. 30 Viktoriastrasse (as Národní třída was called during the German occupation), Prague. The bookshop, designed by the architect František Zelenka, was built in 1938 on the ground floor and first floor of what had originally been an Art Nouveau building. From 1949 to 1953 (in the early years of the Communist régime), the building housed the Galerie Práce (Work Gallery), then, from 1953 to 1954, it was the home of the Galerie Kniha (Book Gallery), and, until 1959, the Galerie  Českého fondu výtvarných umění (Gallery of the Czech Council for Fine Art). Beginning in 1959, when the gallery was named after the Czech painter, graphic artist, and illustrator Václav Špála, the exhibition programme was gradually influenced by writers on art such as Eva Petrová, Jiří Šetlík, Ludmila Vachtová, and František Dvořák. Beginning with an exhibition of works by Zbyněk Sekal in 1965, the gallery flourished under the management of the respected writer on art Jindřich Chalupecký. Under his direction, a whole generation of Czech modern artists showed their works one after another in the gallery, but, in 1969, it also  held the only Prague exhibition of works by Marcel Duchamp. The last exhibition organized by Chalupecký consisted of paintings by Vladimír Kopecký in May 1970. In the 1970s and 1980s, after the defeat of the ‘Prague Spring’ reform movement, Chalupecký was under a State ban and could not publish or be employed in his field. The gallery programme at this time was determined by the Association of Czechoslovak Fine Artists (Svaz československých výtvarných umělců), which was subservient to the régime, and the importance of the gallery declined. Since the Velvet Revolution of late 1989, the Václav Špála Gallery has again  been holding exhibitions curated by respected scholars of art, including Mahulena Nešlehová, Jiří Valoch, Marie Klimešová, Eva Petrová, Josef Kroutvor, Jan Kříž, and Ivo Janoušek, showing works of art by young new artists as well as artists of the 1960s and 1970s generations. In honour of the golden era of the Václav Špála Gallery, a Jindřich Chalupecký Prize (Cena Jindřicha Chalupeckého) for Czech fine artists aged 35 years or younger was established in 1990. The first winner was Vladimír Kokolia. In the 1990s, under the direction of Jaroslav Krbůšek, the Václav Špála Gallery became generally known as a forward-looking  exhibition space for contemporary Czech art. Beginning in 2002, the gallery was run by the Czech Art Foundation (Nadace Český fond umění), which began to lease the gallery to anyone who was willing to pay. This resulted in public protests from a range of people in the art world. In 2007, the Borough of Prague 1 published a request for tender to find someone or some institution that would operate the gallery. Semma, an advertising and marketing agency, won the tender, but two years later ceased to rent it, allegedly because of a lack of finances. In 2010, the Borough  of Prague 1 published another request for tender to find someone to operate the Václav Špála Gallery. The winning project was presented by PPF Art, which thus took over the gallery for the next ten years. Together with the Václav Špála Gallery, PPF Art, part of the PPF Group, also manages the Josef Sudek Studio (Ateliér Josef Sudek) on Újezd street, Prague. PPF Art is also the curator of a unique collection of Czech and Slovak photography, the largest part of which is a collection of photographs by the renowned Josef Sudek. PPF Art is also the curator of a  collection that constitutes a cross-section of Czech fine art from the late nineteenth century to the present.