solo show Anna Zemánková
This May, Gladstone Gallery presents an exhibition of drawings by Czech artist Anna Zemánková (1908–1986), spanning her oeuvre from the 1960s-1970s.
This exhibition emphasizes the remarkable foresight of Zemán ková’ s work through an art historical lens, reflecting her trailblazing influence in abstraction and seeks to expand the psychological and spiritual realms of the form. The works in the show comprise rarely seen incandescent botanical drawings and pastel works on paper.
It was at the beginning of the 1960s that this humble Moravian woman began creating works, strikingly responding to impulses from the depths. At dawn, she would mentally gather flowers “that grow nowhere else,” making them emerge from the paper.
Anna Zemánková is an established figure of outsider art, to the point that she was honored in 2013 at the Venice Biennale before a significant collection of her works joined the collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Mumok.
In 2023, the gallery presented her in a solo show at Art Basel Paris, and the following year Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the Venice Biennale, exhibited a group of her works. In 2026, the Hermès Corporate Foundation in Brussels subsequently presented eight of her drawings.