Trade Fair Palace
In a magnificent functionalist building dating from the 1920s, you'll find the rich 20th and 21st century collections of Prague's National Gallery, with a multi-disciplinary presentation: paintings and sculptures, of course, but also graphics, architecture, design, industrial art, scenography...
The Exhibition Palace (Veletržní palác in Czech), a huge functionalist building dating from the 1920s, is well worth a visit. The avant-garde work of architects Oldřich Tyl and Josef Fuchs, it is a manifesto of modernity in its simplicity, whiteness, purity of line and light-filled spaces, notably in the impressive central hall from which the eight floors rise. Originally intended for exhibitions of industrial machinery, it was ravaged by fire in the 1970s and threatened with destruction, before finding a second life as the home of the National Gallery's rich collections of modern and contemporary art.
The French art collection of the 19th and 20th centuries is the most prestigious. It is the result of fruitful links between the fledgling Czechoslovakia and France between the wars. The attention of Bohemian artists, collectors and art historians was focused on the Parisian avant-garde. Careful purchases, later supplemented by generous donations, made up this unique collection featuring works by the greatest French artists: Delacroix, Carpeaux, Rodin, Courbet, Monet, Pissarro, Gauguin, Cézanne, the Parisian works of Picasso (widely represented here), Derain, Dufy, Bourdelle...
Less well known internationally, Czech twentieth-century art also deserves attention. The exhibition opens with the avant-garde work of František Kupka, widely represented: the National Gallery's collection allows us to follow all the stages of his creation, from his early canvases imbued with symbolism to his radical works of geometric abstraction. Czech cubism is present in all fields of creation, and shows how attentive the artists were to the contemporary Parisian avant-garde.
On the second floor, Czech art from the 1930s to 2000 takes us from modern to contemporary art, from the surrealists of the 1930s to kinetic art installations.
Finally, the second floor presents the international works of the 20th century: we discover or rediscover the works of G. Klimt, E. Schiele, J. Miró, A. Tàpies, J. Beuys, T. Cragg, C. Sherman...