World of People, Galerie Klementinum, Czechia 2008

Curator: Karel Holub
Venue: Klementinum Gallery, Křižovnická 190, Prague 1
Dates: 10 April – 15 June 2008

The exhibition Svět lidí at the Klementinum Gallery is dedicated to the work of the painter and globetrotter Jan Šafránek on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Jan Šafránek, who years ago set out via Austria to Australia and abroad, among other things, collaborated with Škvorecký’s Sixty-Eight Publishers, presents in Prague a cross-section of his work to date in more than sixty paintings. Some of the exhibited works are for sale; others have been loaned from private collections.

“Jan Šafránek’s painterly work can easily be associated with the broader current of the so-called Czech grotesque, yet it differs in an important way. While the vast majority of grotesque works are based on imaginative metaphor, Jan Šafránek seeks and finds his satirical grotesque in the entirely ordinary scenery of everyday life. Imaginative reinterpretation of the scene is foreign to him. He does not need it. It would distance him from the raw fact of the life situation. He does not wish to lose contact with the autonomous testimony of reality, which repeatedly draws him back. He subjects his painting to such a dictate as well, without fear that this would diminish the artistic value of the work.”

Jan Kříž