Anna Zemánková
retrospective
curator : Pascale Jeanneret, curator at the Collection de l’Art Brut, and Terezie Zemánková, art critic and independent curator.
La collection de l’art brut consacre une grande rétrospective au travail de la créatrice d’origine tchèque Anna Zemánková (1908 – 1986) que nous représentons depuis 2010. Cette présentation est organisée en étroite collaboration avec la famille de l’auteur, qui s’applique depuis de nombreuses années à valoriser son œuvre.
A cette occasion, la Collection de l’Art Brut a réuni une large sélection de près de 130 dessins issus de son fonds et de l’importante collection familiale, dont beaucoup seront montrés pour la première fois et d’une collection privée tchèque. L’exposition est accompagnée de documents d’archives, d’un film inédit sur Anna Zemánková et simultanément parait une importante publication.
The Collection de l’Art Brut proudly presents a major retrospective of works by the Czech creator Anna Zemánková (1908 – 1986).
The event has been set up in close conjunction with this creator’s family who, for many years now, has sought to promote Zemánková’s oeuvre. To that end, the Collection de l’Art Brut has assembled a large selection of nearly 130 drawings from both its own holdings and the family’s private collection: many of these are being shown for the first time.
Works from a private Czech collection will also go on display, together with archival documents, a to-date-unreleased film on Anna Zemánková and a major monograph.
It was in the early 1960s that this humble Moravian woman began producing a body of work for which her background had not prepared her, responding strikingly to impulses from deep within. Thus, at a time when the demons of the night still contended with the seminal hues of dawn, she would, in her mind, pick strange flowers and bring them to life on paper. Anna Zemánková is now a well-established figure in Art Brut, to the point that she was honored at the Venice Biennale in 2013, before a significant collection of her works was acquired by the Centre Pompidou, followed by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 2020. In 2024, her works will be presented at the Venice Biennale for the second time, under the curatorship of Adriano Pedrosa.