Greetings to Igor Zhoř

The exhibition, prepared for the 100th anniversary of Igor Zhoř's birth, will present the personality of the exceptional Brno educator and theoretician of art education, author of publications on contemporary Czech and international art, curator, critic, organizer and initiator of art cultural events, who significantly shaped the Brno art scene in the second half of the twentieth century. Zhoř's concept of art pedagogy, integrating visual and action forms of contemporary art through his own creative experience, has foreshadowed and influenced the shape of contemporary educational gallery practice.   

The exhibition will present the breadth of Zhoř's theoretical, popularization, educational and organizational activities in the form of an accessible and interactive installation, which will take the form of a collage, assembled from various archival materials, artworks from Zhoř's collection, as well as several contemporary artistic interventions and performative accompanying programs that will introduce the concept of Zhoř's art pedagogy. In collaboration with Igor Zhoř's family, it will be possible to present a number of unique archival materials, including, in addition to texts, catalogues, publications or correspondence, photographs from art events, Zhoř's own conceptually conceived PFs, a collection of matches and fire-inspired artworks, as well as a sample from his extensive art collection, which is a testament to Zhoř's friendship ties with several generations of artists, especially from the so-called "Zhoř's art collection". The exhibition also includes works by several artists from several generations of the Brno circle. These include works by Dalibor Chatrný, Leonid Ochrymchuk, Jan Wojnar, Pavel Rudolf, Jan Steklík, J. H. Kocman and many others.

The exhibition will include several contemporary artistic interventions, such as Tereza Velíková's work on Zhoř's texts in the field of art pedagogy, or group accompanying programmes with contemporary artists conceived as performative events with public participation.

Igor Zhoř (1925 - 1997) worked in 1959-1970, until his ban, at the Department of Art Education at the Faculty of Education of the Brno University of Life Sciences. In the 1950s, he was a theoretician of the post-war Brno art group Profil 58, in 1960, together with Adolf Kroupa, he founded the Young Friends of Art Club at the House of Art, in the 1960s he created the concept of a didactic exhibition block called "School of Seeing", and became a member of the Czechoslovak section of INSEA, which focused on the theory of art education. In 1967 he initiated the establishment of the city's Gallery of Youth, aimed at presenting young artists and graduates of art schools. From 1965 to 1970, he served as commissioner of the Jaroslav Kral Gallery at the House of Arts, where he collaborated with contemporary Czech artists and theorists on a progressive exhibition programme. From the early 1970s, when he was unable to work publicly, he continued his theoretical activities and worked as a lecturer in art circles for non-professional artists. Under pseudonyms, he published articles in periodicals and contributed to samizdat collections. After 1989 he returned as head of the Department of Art Education, where he was appointed professor. 

In 1993 he was one of the founders of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Brno University of Technology and the author of the school's concept and curriculum. In 1997 he was appointed Dean of the School. Since the 1950s, he has prepared and participated in a large number of important exhibition projects, collaborated with a number of artists and designers, and published a number of publications, such as The Search for Shape (1967) on contemporary world sculpture, The School of Art Thought (1987), and The Transformations of Contemporary Art (1992).

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