Margita Titlová Ylovsky’s Exhibition in the Fire-damaged Trade Fair Palace
Few people visiting Prague today will leave out a trip to the Trade Fair Palace where the National Gallery’s collection of modern art is exhibited. Yet in the 1970s this functionalist building was undergoing extensive renovations after being severely damaged by a fire. In 1985, Margita Titlová Ylovsky, a recent graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, organized a one-day exhibition in the Palace’s devastated spaces. The exhibition included large-format drawings, which demonstrated the then current inclination of young Czech artists toward postmodern painting. At that time, Titlová was not only exhibiting in her own studio, where she also organized exhibitions for other artists, but was also presenting her works at cultural centers, but also at alternative sites such tennis courts and hop-fields. The format of the improvised exhibitions in any available space was a spontaneous reaction of her generation to being closed off from the official exhibition scene.
If we try to reconstruct the form of this unusual exhibition from photographs, it becomes apparent that it was an impressive show that took place right in the middle of a construction site. The space was loosely demarcated by installed panels – so any of the construction workers there could have walked through the exhibition. The works were lit up by spotlights placed on the ground. The expressiveness of Titlová’s work was underlined by the construction site milieu dominated by bare concrete ceilings and an endless vista to the dilapidated space.
The series of black-and-white photographs of the exhibition were taken by Vladimír Merta and Aleš Veselý; Jiří Ševčík captured the show in color film footage. Several of Titlová’s friends attended the exhibition, as well as important art historians. This interest bears witness to the significance such alternative exhibition projects possessed on the Czech art scene, even though they were created in a do-it-yourself spirit in improvised conditions.
Bibliography:
Margita Titlová–Ylovsky, Identita, exh. cat., Aparat, Prague, 2017.
Date: April 1985
Participant: Margita Titlová Ylovsky (1957)
Location: Trade Fair Palace, Prague