anna zemánková
paris+ par art basel
On the occasion of Paris+ by Art Basel, the gallery is presenting, for the first time, a museal selection consisting of artworks from the most significant period of Anna Zemánková - the iconic large pastels from the 1960s and 1970s - and more sophisticated drawings which include textile collage, embossing, or paper cutouts.
The Venice Biennale (curated by Massimiliano Gioni) in 2013 transformed Anna Zemánková from an iconic figure of art brut to an artist adored by the contemporary art world. Her works have joined countless collections, including those of the Centre Pompidou and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and in recent years have been shown in major exhibitions including those at the New Museum (NYC), the Hyogo Museum (Kobe), Lafayette Anticipations (Paris) and the Rudolfinum (Prague).
It was in the early 1960s that this Moravian woman began producing a body of work for which her humble background had not prepared her and which responded strikingly to injunctions from the innermost depths. Thus, at a time when the demons of the night were still competing with the seminal iridescence of dawn, she would gather strange flowers in her mind before drawing them forth on paper. ‘‘I grow flowers that don’t grow anywhere else,’’ she used to say. Anna Zemánková is already an established figure in the art brut, so much so that in 2013 she was honored at the 55th Venice Biennale before an important group of her works joined the collections of the Centre Pompidou and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 2020.
