SUMMERBREAK: July 12 – August 17, 2026

This exhibition brings together a curated selection of some of Miroslav Tichý’s most striking works, spanning different periods of his life and artistic practice—from rare early paintings and drawings to his later, now iconic photographic work.

After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1945 to 1948, where he was regarded as a particularly gifted draughtsman and devoted himself intensively to studying the female nude, the Communist takeover of 1948 brought about his definitive break with the Academy. As the nude was rejected as bourgeois and decadent and Socialist Realism was promoted in its place, Tichý withdrew to his hometown of Kyjov. There, outside the established art world and removed from official artistic structures, he began to develop an independent artistic practice.

The female figure remained the central motif of his work throughout his life. In drawings, paintings and, later, photographs, he explored its appearance and movement. He found his subjects in everyday life—on the street, in parks or at swimming pools. Although the image of women is at the heart of his work, his practice is shaped less by erotic interest than by an artistic investigation of form, movement and perception—an approach that recalls Henri Matisse, an early influence on Miroslav Tichý.

From the late 1960s onwards, Tichý began to photograph. At first, he used conventional cameras, but later constructed his own idiosyncratic devices from simple materials such as wood, spectacle lenses and hand-ground lenses. He frequently worked further on the resulting photographs through drawing, collage or improvised framing, deliberately pushing beyond the conventions of photographic practice.

His body of work spans a range of media and includes thousands of drawings, numerous paintings and monotypes, as well as an extensive photographic oeuvre. It is characterised by a deliberately unconventional visual language and unfolds into a distinctive, poetic pictorial world that resists established aesthetic norms.

The exhibition brings this multifaceted practice into view. It presents Tichý’s simultaneous engagement with different media alongside his self-built cameras and enlargers, offering direct insight into the conditions under which his work was created.