2010-03-19T15:25:23+01:00 Radio Prague http://www.radio.cz/en/current/arts urn:uuid:735f6e69-fced-531c-97d2-901ace55247b 2010-03-19T15:25:22+01:00

In this edition of the Arts we meet some of the guests at this year’s One World international festival of human rights documentaries in Prague, including an Oscar-nominee from the jury, the winner of the main competition and the recipient of the Václav Havel award.

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Artist Zdeněk Sýkora, who turned 90 last month, is without question one of the Czech Republic’s most important painters, whose style over his long career developed from traditional landscapes to the abstract line paintings for which he is certainly best known. A retrospective of some of the artist’s best work – including Line No. 24 on loan from Centre Pompidou in Paris – is currently underway at Prague’s Municipal Library, a highly-respected gallery space within the city centre.

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It’s a long way from the Czech Republic to Yemen, but you can cover the distance of nearly 6,000 km between the Czech capital and the coastal city of Aden in less than an hour. All you need to do is to have a listen to the new album by the Prague-based band Al-Yaman. Entitled Insanyya, its music combines electronica and dub with Arabic acoustic instruments and folk songs.

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Vladimíra Krčková recently performed at Life Fashion Café in Prague. She sang songs like “Once I had a secret love”, originally written for Doris Day in the 1950s. Standards like this one form the core of Krčková’s repertoire. Most pieces she performs are English-language tunes, but the singer also throws in the occasional French chanson and Spanish classics.

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František Matoušek’s paintings are instantly recognizable because of the material he uses, instead of painting on canvas, Matoušek stretches different varieties of denim over his frames. Often, he distresses the fabric, removes threads and roughs it up, so the texture of the denim becomes an element of the paintings’ motifs.

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Kawasakiho Růže or Kawasaki’s Rose is the newest film by the successful Czech director-screenwriter duo Jan Hřebejk and Petr Jarchovský. In Kawasaki’s Rose, Hřebejk, considered one of the leading directors of his generation, explores a story about family tensions, but as the conflict between the characters escalates, the film becomes deeply political.

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Anyone familiar with the Czech electronic and dance music scene will have come across the work of Jitka Charvátová, also known as Ji, the charismatic and talented former singer for cutting edge groups like Skyline and the late Milan Hlavsa’s 1990s band Fiction. Now Jitka has reset her career with a recently released but already highly-lauded new solo album called Feed My Lion, featuring 8-bit, electro pop and elements of hip hop.

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The Plastic People of the Universe are back with a new album entitled Maska za maskou [The Mask behind the Mask], their first release in nearly a decade, and the first written since the death of their previous lead songwriter Milan “Mejla” Hlavsa. The group are absolute legends of the Czech rock underground, and it was their imprisonment by the communist authorities which famously sparked the Charter 77 protest movement. But while they may now feature in modern history books, the Plastic People always insisted they just wanted to be allowed to play their music – and since 1989 have been more or less a regular gigging band.

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Hunt Kastner Artworks in Prague 7 is a private gallery owned and run by Camille Hunt, who is Canadian, and Katherine Kastner, who is from the US though her mother is Czech. The two represent 10 Czech artists, among them Eva Koťátková, Josef Bolf and Daniel Pitín. This week I stopped by to talk to the owners about their work, both curating shows and helping their artists find buyers overseas. I first asked Hunt what had led them to open the gallery in the first place.

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Often thought of as a historical period in which art was destroyed rather than created, the Reformation is rarely examined in terms of the artwork it produced. An exhibition that will open at the Prague Castle this Friday takes a look at Bohemian art from that very period.