This exhibition at Museum Kampa celebrates the married artists Jaroslava Kurandová and Zdeněk Rybka, highlighting their parallel artistic journeys. The display focuses on their shift towards geometric abstraction in the 1960s and their contributions to the Klub konkretistů, exploring their individual techniques and the impact of historical events on their careers.
Museum Kampa presents the profound artistic legacies of Jaroslava Kurandová (1936–2024) and Zdeněk Rybka (1938), a married couple whose lives and art were intertwined by fate and shaped by historical currents. Meeting and studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, their early careers in the 1960s saw them move away from academic figurative painting towards geometric rigour and a vibrant color spectrum, becoming key members of the Klub konkretistů. Kurandová expanded her work into three-dimensional space using smooth nitro-lacquered hardboard and plexiglass, while Rybka pioneered electrography, creating images with a unique halo effect that lent them a mystical dimension.
Following the 1968 invasion, both artists retreated from public artistic life to focus on teaching. They returned to their creative practices in the late 1980s with renewed vigor. Rybka introduced his Vântîl direction, marked by absurdity and irreverence, alongside a return to expressive figurative painting grounded in geometric frameworks. Kurandová's later works, characterized by slender strips on canvas, conveyed a sense of movement and energy, often imbued with civic engagement on political or environmental issues. This exhibition aims to restore their significant contributions to art history, acknowledging how historical events might have altered their trajectories, such as Rybka potentially teaching in California or Kurandová continuing her ethical continuity of art education.