Museum Kampa presents the work of a pair of artists bound together by fate—the married couple Zdeněk Rybka (1938) and Jaroslava Kurandová (1936–2024). They met in secondary school, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, married, divorced and then married again. Very similar, in fact, to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

            During the 1960s, they replaced academic figurative painting and its austere, subdued tones with geometric rigour and a broad colour spectrum. They became members of the Klub konkretistů (Club of Concretists), exhibiting with the group at numerous venues at home and abroad. Using smooth nitro‑lacquered hardboard and plexiglass, Jaroslava Kurandová carried her work into three‑dimensional space. Zdeněk Rybka experimented with electrography. With this technique, photographic impressions of objects on a photosensitive surface are, once developed, surrounded by a glowing halo or corona. The electric discharge lends the electrographs an almost mystical dimension. Several surprising objects were also created, many of them designed to be hung.

            After the August 1968 invasion, both artists withdrew from Prague, stepped back from their own creative work and devoted their energies to teaching at art schools. They did not return to their artistic work until the late 1980s. Zdeněk Rybka introduced a new direction he called Vântîl, attracting several followers. It incorporated a measure of absurdity and a knowingly irreverent tone. Jaroslava Kurandová pressed slender metal or plexiglass strips onto canvas in parallel rows. These conveyed a sense of movement and energy. Her work always bore a sense of civic engagement, whether political or environmental. Rybka returned to expressive figurative painting, though his work remained grounded in a geometric framework.

            The exhibition restores to the narrative of art history two creators whose lives were profoundly shaped by historical events. If not for the period of Normalisation, we might well have seen Rybka teaching electrography at one of California’s hip, avant‑garde art schools. In Jaroslava Kurandová’s work, art education is not a detour but an ethical continuity of the oeuvre. She became a charismatic and respected teacher known for her warmth and the esteem she inspired. Silence was not a sign of weakness, but a stance.

Curator: Martina Víková