Exhibition: MarekKurt

Date: 18.11. - 17.12.2025

Kurt Gebauer and Marek Rejent at Beseder Gallery, November 18 – December 16, 2025,
opening reception November 18 at 7 p.m.

The last – sixth – artistic duo to be presented at Beseder Gallery this year as part of the 1+1 cycle will be Kurt Gebauer and Marek Rejent.

Kurt Gebauer likes to say that he is a painter, but he became famous as a sculptor, especially for his installations in public spaces. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1968 and has been a freelancer ever since. In 1987, he was one of the founding members of the art group 12/15 – Pozdě ale přece (Late but Still), whose members included Ivan Ouhel, Michael Rittstein, Jiří Načeradský, and Jiří Sopko. The group was active until the 1990s. After the Velvet Revolution, he became a professor at the Studio of All Sculpture at UMPRUM, where he worked for over two decades. His students included David Černý, Martin Kocourek, and many others.

Kurt Gebauer is primarily a figurative artist, whether he is creating girls, heads, or dwarfs. His works are poetic, mischievous, sometimes rough and heavy (bronze, stone), sometimes fragile and light (paper), but always witty, detached, and timeless. He has had dozens of exhibitions at home and abroad. Let us mention, for example, the retrospective at the National Gallery in 2020 on the occasion of his 80th birthday, which was mostly inaccessible due to COVID.

Among his works in public spaces, we can mention Heart for Václav Havel (2016) at the National Theater, Caterpillar of Early Capitalism (2003), the stone installation Battlefield in Dalajské Valley, and the monument to František Palacký in the form of a large sandstone book in Neratovice (2018). The Beseder Gallery will present examples of Gebauer's paintings and sculptures.

Marek Rejent was the first student of Gebauer's studio, the Studio of All Sculpture, at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in the early 1990s. He got a good foundation at UMPRUM and has since gone his own way – more diverse than his teacher, whether in terms of materials, themes, or processing. His work is more everyday, responding to more specific stimuli and situations. Just look at the titles of his creative cycles, such as Village Pantheon, PET Madonna, Parasites and Other Insects, Tractors, Vacuum Cleaners, Tuned Pioneer (reminiscent of Jan Tleskač's flying bicycle), or Turbokmen. Almost every series is made from a different material and using a different technique.
Some of his characteristic works can also be seen at this exhibition. Marek Rejent has created several works for the place where he lives – Proseč in the Chrudim region.

Curator: Miroslav Krupička

We look forward to your visit.
The Beseder Gallery Team