JOSEF JÍRA & JAROSLAV FIAN — Bohumil Hrabal's Pábitelé | March 19—June 7, 2026
The exhibition "Bohumil Hrabal's 'Pábitelé'" at the Czech Gallery of Modern Art presents a dialogue between two distinctive, yet fundamentally different painting personalities – Josef Jíra and Jaroslav Fian. The unifying motif of their encounter across artistic worlds is the personality of the writer Bohumil Hrabal, whose thinking, language, and way of perceiving reality are reflected in their works in various, often surprising ways.
Josef Jíra (1929—2005) is one of the most significant Czech painters, graphic artists, and illustrators of the second half of the 20th century. His work is characterized by existential urgency, grotesque abbreviation, and profound humanism. Jíra's figures, often deformed and set in dreamlike or oppressive landscapes, carry a strong emotional charge and refer to the tragicomic essence of human existence. It was this ability to balance between harshness and poetry that naturally brought him closer to Hrabal's world – a world of "pábitelé" (raconteurs/fabulators), outsiders, pub philosophers, and lonely observers who, through their speech and existence, defy the mundane.
At the opposite pole stands Jaroslav Fian (1941—2023), a painter almost forgotten today, whose work, however, surprises all the more strongly with its authenticity and inner freedom. Fian's painting is intuitive, unpolished, and often seemingly outside the mainstream of official art. Yet, it is precisely in this "uncategorizability" that its strength lies. Fian was not a painter of grand gestures, but a silent observer of everyday life, its mundane and absurd moments. His paintings act as visual "pábení" – inconspicuous, personal, yet deeply eloquent.
