Národní galerie will exhibit key authors of the 20th and 21st centuries

Prague - The National Gallery will present 80 works by significant world artists of the 20th and 21st centuries in a new exhibition Monet - Warhol: Masterpieces from the Albertina Museum and the Batliner Collection. Visitors will be able to see, among other things, the famous Water Lilies by the Impressionist Claude Monet, paintings by the Fauvist Henri Matisse, representatives of the Russian avant-garde and abstraction Kazimir Malevich and Vasily Kandinsky, representatives of Surrealism René Magritte and Max Ernst, and Pop Art by Andy Warhol. Details of the exhibition will be presented by the National Gallery (NG) in Prague on Tuesday.
    The exhibition in the Trade Fair Palace will open to the public on Wednesday and will run until January 7. The basic admission fee will be 200 Czech crowns.
    "This exhibition maps the development of modern art from the early 20th century to works from the beginning of the 21st century, with the iconic painting Water Lilies by Monet from 1917 to 1919 as part of his late work," said curator Olga Uhrová to ČTK.
    The works of the exhibited authors are currently major draws on the world art market, achieving high prices at auctions. "Of course, insurance must correspond to the situation," Uhrová added to ČTK. The transport from Vienna was also handled with great care and accompanied by police. Work on the exhibition has been ongoing for more than a year.
    According to the curator, the exhibition is unique in what it offers. These are works that have never been presented in the Czech Republic in such a collection. Presenting extensive collections of modern world art has been quite difficult in Czechoslovakia in the past, except for a brief period of the so-called Prague Spring and a few exhibitions at the turn of the 60s and 70s and in the 80s, when the National Gallery held the exhibition Treasures of Modern Art from the collections of the Guggenheim Foundation.
    The works come mainly from the most significant European collections of Rita and Herbert Batliner. The collection was developed for nearly half a century, initially focusing on the works of contemporary artists, later enriched with valuable works by masters of classical modern art. Since 2007, this collection, which includes 300 works of art, has been presented in the exhibition spaces of the Albertina in Vienna.