About the gallery

Joža Uprka Gallery in Uherské Hradiště

The intention to set up a space for the Joža Uprka Gallery in one section of a renovated building of the former Jesuit College in Uherské Hradiště arose from cooperation between the town of Uherské Hradiště and the Moravian Slovakia Foundation. The basis of the remarkable permanent exhibition of works created by the prominent Czech artist became the largest collection of Uprka’s works in the Czech Republic built up by Zdeněk Zemek, a well-known entrepreneur and collector from Uherské Hradiště, in close cooperation with Petr Vašát, entrepreneur, collector, and founder of the Joža Uprka Gallery, which was established in Prague a few years earlier, in 1995, and played a great part in promoting Uprka’s works both at home and abroad (e.g. in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in 2002). In cooperation with the National Gallery in Prague, the Moravian Slovakia Foundation contributed significantly to organisation of a large jubilee exhibition of Uprka’s works on the occasion of the artist’s 150th birthday. The exhibition was opened at the turn of the year 2011 - 2012 and took place in the Wallenstein Riding School in Prague.

A major part of the paintings exhibited in the Joža Uprka Gallery in Uherské Hradiště represent selected works from the collection of the Moravian Slovakia Foundation (Joža Uprka Gallery), complemented by works lent to the gallery by the National Gallery in Prague, the Moravian Gallery in Brno, the Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava, the Olomouc Museum of Art, the Regional Gallery of Fine Arts in Zlín, the Museum of Moravian Slovakia in Uherské Hradiště, and the Roman Catholic Parish in Strážnice. The exhibition also features sculptures created by Joža Uprka’s younger brother, a well-known sculptor Franta Úprka. While passing through the spacious corridors of the gallery, visitors can see authentic large-scale photographs on the wall capturing moments of Joža Uprka’s life in chronological order.

A part of a corridor with the original wooden ceiling and unique large-screen photographs from the Museum of Czech Literature on the wall capturing moments of Joža Uprka’s life. / photo by Michal Malina

Inside one of the exhibition rooms. / photo by Petr Titz

The life and work of Joža Uprka

Joža Uprka appeared on the Czech art scene in the 90s of the 19th century as one of the most prominent and original painters. He was born on October 25th, 1861, in the village of Kněždub near Strážnice, in the scenic countryside of Moravian Slovakia. His human as well as artistic connection to that corner of the country was so very strong that it became a permanent and inexhaustible source of inspiration for his paintings until the end of his life. He was well acquainted with the nature and landscape of the region, life of its people, their labour, traditions, customs, festivities, songs, and folk costumes typical for individual sub-regions of the Moravian Slovakia. However, his work drew inspiration also from the atmosphere of folk environment of the nearby Slovakia. The idea to become a painter of his people was growing directly from Uprka’s origin, and his art was focused from the very beginning exclusively on depicting everyday life that still had all characteristic features of authentic folklore in the Moravian-Slovak villages back in those days. His work was not, however, limited by strictly defined interests of a folklorist. He was first and foremost an artist who was searching for new possibilities for art direction, free from academic rules of the past. For that reason, his name will forever be written in the history of Czech visual arts as the name of a painter who was opening the way to Modern Realism, and with his own distinctive interpretation of the relationship between colour and light, he moved towards the aesthetics of impressionism in the Czech painting as one of the first Czech artists.

Joža Uprka inherited his artistic talents from his father Jan Uprka, a peasant, whose pastime was to paint various figural scenes in the spirit of folk art on glass or walls of their family house. As a young boy, Joža studied at a high school, and in 1881, he began studying at the Art Academy in Prague. However, as he was not satisfied with the conservative teaching at the Academy, he left to continue his studies at the Art Academy in Munich in Germany. In the liberal environment of the school, he had much greater freedom to paint as he wished. During holidays, he hiked through the Moravian-Slovak countryside as well as through the adjacent part of the western Slovakia, and being in the direct contact with the local environment, he drew sketches and studies of folk types and costumes. After completing his art studies in Munich, he returned back to the Art Academy in Prague, where new, progressive tendencies appeared in the teaching. However, he left the school after a year to settle down in his native region permanently. During the early days of his artistic career, he didn’t have a permanent studio space, so he was living for short periods at various places of the Moravian Slovakia, where he found many friends, fans of his work as well as several first patrons (pharmacist Nečas, ethnographers Kretz, Klvaňa in Uherské Hradiště). His works were more and more frequently shown at exhibitions, both in Prague and other places of the Czech Lands. Despite disfavour of conservative critics, Uprka was entering into the cultural awareness of the Czech nation as a personality who couldn’t be overlooked in the context of the Czech painting at that time. Owing to the proceeds from his art activities (mural paintings depicting scenes from the foundation of the town at the Town Hall in Uherské Hradiště) and lands scholarship, the artist was able to undertake a short-term study visit to Paris in 1893, where he learned a great deal, as he later admitted. He got familiar with works of French realists, and paintings by French impressionists didn’t escape his notice either.
From Paris he travelled also to London and stopped in Holland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and in Munich on his way back. Even in later years, owing to his regular visits to Vienna and Munich, he was always well informed about what was going on in Europe’s art scene. Also documented are his trips to the Balkans, to Italy, Egypt, and Russia. Of great importance for the development of Uprka’s artistic personality were his contacts with many well-known representatives of national cultural life, visual artists, writers, composers, collectors, ethnographers, and journalists. He was seeing them regularly and cooperated with them to uplift the Moravian culture and art life (Mrštík brothers, Hanuš Schwaiger, Zdenka Braunerová, Dušan Jurkovič, and many others). Uprka’s prestige was strengthened when he received an “honourable mention” award for his painting called “Pilgrimage to St. Anthony” exhibited at the Salon in 1894 and the gold anniversary medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts that he was awarded in 1895 for a work with the same theme. A big exhibition of Uprka’s works held in Prague in the Topičův salon gallery in 1897 became an extraordinary cultural event both for art critics and for a wide audience. The works presented in the exhibition were the ones that are nowadays considered to be the most important part of the artist’s lifelong work. When Uprka settled down permanently in Hroznová Lhota in 1897, where he was building his house and studio, he was already generally considered to be a leading figure in the Moravian art world.

The house and studio Joža Uprka in Hroznova Lhota

He became an active member of the Club of Friends of Art in Brno (founded in 1890), bringing together a number of outstanding Moravian artists (Leoš Janáček, Dušan Jurkovič, Jan Štursa, Max Švabinský, Stanislav Lolek, Adolf Kašpar, Alois Kalvoda, and others).
Uprka gathered around him a group of several Moravian and Slovak artists who held the first joint exhibition of their works in Hodonín in 1902. Among the exhibits were the works created by Uprka’s brother, sculptor Franta Úprka, and the painters Antoš Frolka, Cyril Mandel, Ludvík Ehrenhaft, Jan Hudeček, and František Pečínka. The painters Tomáš Andráškovič, Josef Hanula, Milan Mitrovský, Jaroslav Augusta, and Karol Lehotský were representing Slovakia. Their works were even seen by the brilliant French sculptor Auguste Rodin, who was just exhibiting his works in Prague at that time and made a tour through Moravia on this occasion. Rodin’s visit to Uprka’s house in Hroznová Lhota was a great honour for the artist. On Uprka’s initiative, the Association of Moravian Artists, an association bringing together many personalities from the Moravian artistic community (many of whom were members of the Club of Friends of Art earlier), was founded in 1907. Apart from that, Uprka played the main part in establishing an exhibition and administrative centre of the Association, the so-called House of Artists, opened in Hodonín in 1913. The Association engaged in numerous exhibition activities, both at home and abroad, strived to maintain and develop rich traditions of folk culture in Moravia, and was promoting the idea of cooperation among the artists of the Slavic nations. In 1922, Joža Uprka moved from Hroznová Lhota to Klobušice near Ilava in Slovakia, where he pursued themes of the local folk environment for many years. He was even elected a honourable member and later the chairman of the Association of Slovak Artists. Uprka returned back to Hroznová Lhota no earlier than in 1937. His health condition was worsening, and on January 12th, 1940, he died of severe disease. He was buried in a cemetery in his native village of Kněždub.

Inside one of the exhibition rooms. / photo by Petr Titz

Joža Uprka and the town of Uherské Hradiště

The town of Uherské Hradiště played a very important part in Uprka’s life. Setting up a new exhibition not at any other place but at the premises of the former Jesuit College in our town has therefore its logical substantiation. Already during the artist’s lifetime, the town was, and still is, a natural cultural and social centre of the Moravian-Slovak region.

Joža Uprka had very close ties to the town of Uherské Hradiště. Already during the early days of his artistic career, when he didn’t have a permanent studio space, he used to stay and create his works in the town frequently. A great moral as well as material support came from several personalities who had a significant influence on the developing cultural scene of the town until the second half of the 80s. Specifically, it was a well-known ethnographer Prof. Josef Klvaňa, collector and editor František Kretz, fans of art and active cultural agents, senior pharmacist Viktor Nečas, pharmacist Josef Stancl, or lawyer and deputy Doc. Josef Fanderlík. At first, Uprka worked in the house of the senior pharmacist Nečas and later he set up a studio in his garden. When a new Town Hall was being built in the square (1891 - 1893), Joža Uprka was commissioned to decorate the Meeting Hall, where he created mural paintings depicting scenes from the foundation of the town of Uherské Hradiště by the king Ottokar II. of Bohemia, and from the ceremony of Confirmation of municipal privileges by the king George of Poděbrady. When preparations of artistic works to be sent to the Czech & Slavonic Ethnographic Exhibition in Prague (1894) were underway in the Moravian Slovakia, the name of Joža Uprka was among the members of the Central Ethnographic Committee of the Moravian Slovakia. The artist played an active role also in the process of establishing the Museum of Moravian Slovakia in 1914. At the very first exhibition of the newly established institution, nearly one hundred pieces of art created by our artists from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries were on view together with the museum exhibits in the former Jesuit College. Among them were works by Julius Mařák, Antonín Slavíček, Hanuš Schwaiger, Cyril Mandel, Alois Kalvoda, Antoš Frolka, and others. As a recognized leading personality of the Moravian community of artists, Joža Uprka was represented by far the largest collection of paintings. In 1933, Uprka takes out a commission to restore ceiling paintings in the Franciscan Monastery that had been damaged by a great fire in April of 1894. The town pays a tribute to the artist on the occasion of the Moravian Slovakia Exhibition of 1937, the part of which was a large representative set of his works, and bids farewell to him with an exhibition in memoriam in 1940 called “Memories of Life of J. Uprka”.

Jaroslav Pelikán

Inside one of the exhibition rooms. / photo by Petr Titz