The collection display The Ballad of a Miner: One Hundred Years of Mining in Art presents works with coal mining themes from the collection of the National Gallery Prague as well as loaned works by contemporary artists. It covers the period of interwar Czechoslovakia, the Second World War, the post-war building of state socialism and the period of “normalisation“ (the return to hardline communist policies following the Prague Spring), as well as the post-revolutionary period of liberal democracy associated with the decline of coal mining. The exhibition attempts to answer two mutually related questions: What can be learned about mining through the image it has left in art history, and how does art history of the past hundred years appear when viewed through the lens of mining?
This thematically focused collection display thus does not stem from the canon of art movements and of the most prominent art groups and figures. It shows a parallel history of art characterised by Civilist tendencies, Objectivity and Realism, i.e. by the art and literary movement drawing on the unadorned reality and the almost balladic rawness of human life and social conditions influenced by the contradictory effects of the Industrial Revolution. This unprecedented technological and social revolution was fuelled by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, but at the cost of many mining accidents, the disappearance of towns and villages, scarred landscapes and environmental impacts, including present-day climate change caused by human activities.
The collection display presents work by well-known Czech artists such as Josef Čapek, Otto Gutfreund, Karel Holan, Jiří John, Jaroslav Král, Jan Lauda, Kamil Lhoták or Jan Zrzavý, artists tied to the mining regions of Ostrava-Karviná, Most and Kladno regions such as Bohdan Kopecký, Ferdiš Duša, Květa Válová, Jindřich Wielgus or Vilém Wünsche, as well as works by contemporary artists such as Jonáš Czesaný and Karviná natives Václav Jirásek and Jakub Špaňhel.
