6.4.2023 - 31.12.2023

Janz Franz (1946 - 2017)

Janz Franz, an artistic maverick in Austrian painting in the second half of the 20th century, originally from Graz/Styria, an apprenticeship colleague of Arnold Schwarzenegger, then a waiter in Salzburg, self-taught with a connection to rock music and subculture, began to paint intensively at the end of the 1980s. His first role models were Van Gogh, Gaugin, the Blue Rider, but above all Egon Schiele, who became his artistic role model, the Number One that had to be beaten. Discovered by Hermann Nitsch during the Salzburg Summer Academy of 1991, Janz Franz became the enfant terrible of the Austrian art scene and enjoyed international success. His extremely emotional and spontaneous painting drew on states of excitement, often stimulated by shamanism and rock music, which pushed him both mentally and physically to his limits. Animals, demons and witches that needed to be banished populated his rich world of ideas. Rebellious, anti-modern and romantic, the natural maverick Janz Franz brought an unmistakable, new and vital power to painting with his often large-format, colourful pictures. The artist is represented in important public and private collections, including the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg and the Leopold Collection in Vienna. With loans from small and large private collections, the exhibition focuses on the trendy, sometimes ghostly animal pictures as well as on his exuberant Rock'n Roll pictures. Curators: Hana Jirmusová Lazarowitz, Günter Moschig (Janz Franz Projekt, Salzburg), Ingeborg Habereder

6.4.2023 - 31.12.2023

IVANA LOMOVÁ (b. 1959 in Prague)

She studied architecture and switched from drawing, illustration and comics to painting in the 1990s. Regarding her gradual departure from the style of the so-called Czech grotesque and irony, she says: “this kind of humour and irony just gradually no longer seemed important to me. Painting the world as I feel it, without mockery, invention or any other frills, now seems much more interesting to me. I want to paint those fleeting feelings that suddenly and unexpectedly come over us. These moments when we touch our life for a moment and we experience some kind of "truth" in our existence. A picture can be much more appropriate than words for moments like this. Sometimes simply something like a piece of a railway carriage will do. And because I want to be as precise and 'true' as possible, and don´t want to get poetic, use grand gestures or exaggerate, I find a way in perhaps strictly realistic pictures.” Seriousness, nostalgia and the beauty of the everyday appear in Ivana Lomová's paintings. It is a strong emotional encounter with the reality that surrounds her, which is often only processed years later, e.g. a bundle of photographs serves as a sketch and the artist's imagination mixes in targeted interventions. Despite the use of realistic painting, her paintings are strangely dreamlike and recall Schiele's paintings of Krumlov in their love for the town (but also for the town's missing residents). Curators: Hana Jirmusová Lazarowitz, Ingeborg Habereder, Ivana Lomová

6.4.2023 - 31.12.2023

30 years of the ESAC

This year marks 30 years since the ESAC has been open to the public. These thirty years of work can be seen in the beautiful historical building of the former municipal brewery, which we received from the town of Český Krumlov and have gradually repaired during the last three decades. However, our labours can most clearly be seen by viewing the stunning display of large-format posters from almost all the exhibitions that we have organized over the past three decades.

Permanent exhibition about the life and work of Egon Schiele (1890-1918), whose mother, Marie Soukupová (1862-1935) was born in Krumlov. You can see drawings, graphics, the artist's own furniture, personal letters, business cards, dozens of photographs, Schiele's family tree, documentation about his stays in Krumlov and the motifs on his paintings and drawings.
Parallel to this we have seasonally changing exhibitions of classical and contemporary 20th and 21st century art.