Cabinet of Curiosities, which is part of the exhibition How to Collect Art: the Karel Tutsch Story, introduces the visitor to the beginnings of Karel Tutsch's collecting through the first section of ex libris - a collection of small purpose prints, the logical continuation of which was the expansion of interest in free graphic art. The Cabinet of Curiosities will gradually introduce individual artists and their works on paper, which are an indispensable part of the collection.
Printmaker, curator, and professor of art history and theory at the Faculty of Education of Masaryk University in Brno. In his art and studies, he explored the symbolism of various traditions steeped in culture, mysticism, and mythology, which in the 1990s included the culture of cyberspace and virtual reality. His prints and drawings blend medieval Christian imagery with elements of Celtic and Germanic mythology, alchemical and kabbalistic symbols, Renaissance models of the universe, and oriental calligraphy.
Jiří Havlíček’s first encounter with Karel Tutsch at the end of the 1960s blossomed into a long-lasting collaboration that profoundly shaped the future direction of Tutsch’s collection. Havlíček’s influence was not limited to art theory; in his print shop he produced small etchings depicting popular themes, which Tutsch then distributed. In his Merlin series, he printed the cycle Species Alchymiae Et Utraeque Magiae (Species of Alchemy and Both Magics, 1970), and a complete tarot arcana conceived as separate bookplates portraying friends and collectors, in which he incarnated himself as the Fool on the last, unnumbered card (1971–1975). He also produced a series depicting the planets of the solar system – casting Tutsch as an astrologer and himself as a celestial alchemist (1974) – and the humorous Le Chien series (1977). Beyond the mythology and light humour, Jiří Havlíček explored the Christian symbolism of love and salvation – in the Jesus Christ (Ježíš Kristus) series (1975), he depicted selected miracles of Christ and Passion scenes.
Only three small etchings, all from the 1970s, remain in the Karel Tutsch Collection. The sizeable sets that Tutsch still owned in the late 1990s were donated to Moravian institutions – the Regional Gallery of Fine Arts in Zlín, the Hodonín Gallery of Fine Arts, and the Moravian Gallery in Brno – between 2000 and 2002.
The exhibition was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Statutory City of Hradec Králové.
