The three separate exhibitions – M.S.Bastien & Isabelle.L., Věra Nováková and Pavel Brázda – present the stories of artists living and working in completely different systems, but drawing on similar sources of everyday human life, where playfulness, humour and comic elements can even without words point out the absurdity and beauty of not only the 20th century. The Pavel Brázda and Věra Nováková exhibitions present retrospectives with the aim of acquainting Europe with the artists and their troubled fate and work which was certainly ahead of its time in the 1950s, but at the time of its creation it did not get the opportunity to be presented and exhibited. The exhibitions are thus also a small repayment of debt to the artists, who strode complicated paths for decades, separated from the rest of the world by the Iron Curtain and at the same time isolated from the mainstream art scene in Czechoslovakia. However, they still managed to respond to the atmosphere of the time with humour and grace.

(Hana Jirmusová Lazarowitz, exhibition curator)

This exhibition is absolutely amazing and extensive like never before. From the first moment we arrived in Český Krumlov and I saw the enlarged Monster on a building, I was in awe. It’s a beautiful venue and a wonderful collaboration. The exhibition is prepared in a very sensitive way.

(Pavel Brázda, from an interview for iDNES)