The Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava will open ‘Alba vzdoru a naděje’ (‘Albums of Defiance and Hope’), an exhibition devoted to a group of samizdat art albums produced in the Ostrava region during the 1970s. The exhibition will run from 9 September to 25 October 2026 at the Dům umění, the Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava’s main exhibition venue. Its opening will take place on 8 September at 5pm, with admission free and no reservation required.
The exhibition focuses on ‘Album 75’, ‘Album 76’, ‘Album 77’ and ‘Tvorba 1977’. The albums were conceived in the mid-1970s to present work by artists who, because of the political situation, were unable to show their work publicly. Their samizdat publication was realised by Ivo Janoušek, Eduard Ovčáček, Kamil Drabina and Jan Štefan.
According to the gallery, the albums brought together leading figures from Czech and Slovak art in an unusually broad generational statement. The series also asserted the need for creative freedom and the possibility of artistic presentation outside official channels. The exhibition’s title frames the albums as both historical documents and acts of artistic independence, while the gallery’s material places the project within the context of independent publishing in 1970s Czechoslovakia.
The individual albums differed in form. The first and last were photographic, ‘Album 76’ was predominantly graphic, and ‘Album 77’ consisted mainly of drawings. At the Ostrava exhibition, ‘Album 76’ will be represented only by its title page because it has recently been shown several times in the city. The presentation will also include examples of small sculptures known as multiples, which continued the artists’ independent publishing activities in three-dimensional form.
The participating artists include Václav Boštík, Rudolf Fila, Dalibor Chatrný, Josef Istler, Jozef Jankovič, Vladimír Janoušek, Věra Janoušková, Eva Kmentová, Stanislav Kolíbal, Radek Kratina, Milan Laluha, Aleš Lamr, Karel Nepraš, Ladislav Novák, Eduard Ovčáček, Milan Paštéka, Jiří Sopko, Miroslav Šnajdr, Jan Wojnar and Jiří Žlebek, among others. Jiří Jůza is the curator and author of the exhibition text; Katarína Jamrišková is responsible for the graphic design.
‘Alba vzdoru a naděje’ is part of the Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava’s 2026 programme marking 100 years of the Dům umění, founded in 1926. The anniversary season draws on the gallery’s collections and also includes the exhibitions ‘Uhrančivá krása věčných stránek’, devoted to artists’ books and bibliophilic editions, and ‘Na zlomu milénií’, which surveys Czech art from the turn of the millennium. The Dům umění is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10am to 6pm and is located at Jurečkova 9 in Ostrava.
