http://www.gask.cz/en/exhibitions/jan-smetana-work-paper

curator: Richard Drury

The main part of the Jan Smetana retrospective will be accompanied by a small series of his prints and drawings from the collections of GASK and the Gallery of Modern Art in Roudnice nad Labem. While Smetana made prints only during his time as a member of Group 42 and they thus feature the group’s poetically realist vision of the ‘world we live in’, he devoted himself to drawing throughout his life and it evolved parallel to his painting. The exhibition features a small but representative selection of Smetana’s prints from the 1940s. Viewers will be surprised by a contrast between these early works and several of his ‘late’ drawings which, while closely connected with his painting, are not studies for paintings in the true sense of the word. Smetana kept them in his studio and never exhibited them during his lifetime.

GASK - Gallery of Central Bohemian Region