The exhibition of Jiří Načeradský (1939–2014), one of the greatest figures of Czech post-war figurative painting, focuses on his two most prominent painting periods – the iconic works from 1967–1972 and the still fully unappreciated period of the 1970s. These are two formally distinct painting phases, which rank among the most original contributions to Czech painting after 1945 under the socialist state regime. The selection of works comes exclusively from private collections. The title of the exhibition, "Beauty Unveiled," is derived from a painting by Jiří Načeradský from 1969–1974. The artist was likely inspired by the correct naming of a striptease revue operated by the Prague establishment Varieté Praga during the liberal years of 1968–1969 and subsequently until 1971, and also by a Czechoslovak television program of the same name that opened questions of nudity, eroticism, and sex in the puritan environment of communist ideology, where all these categories were automatically associated with the decadent consumption of Western society, not with an environment dominated by the cult of family and work. When we focus on the title in connection with Jiří Načeradský's painting work, we find that it can be perceived as an apt metaphor characterizing his creative approach to updating and transforming the image after modernism and the period of official socialist realism. If "Beauty Unveiled" is associated with the act of "striptease," then striptease is nothing but "undressing," which is "provocative." In other words, Jiří Načeradský entered Czech post-war painting as a phenomenon who "undresses" the classical canon of the image, and thus beauty, to find a new painterly expression that provokes and irritates the viewer. He addressed his need to cope with the complexity of societal changes through increased work engagement, in line with his nature and way of perception, by transforming the "cult of work" into the creation of paintings, where the absurdity of the era stabilizes amidst the flood of works. GROUND FLOOR The collection of paintings from 1967–1972 includes a representative selection of Jiří Načeradský's works, assessing the origins of photography and collage, works that have already entered the golden fund of Czech post-war painting with a sense of reevaluating the image in the context of new visual experiences. The dominant sources of themes from this period are sports, film, television, illustrative magazine – reportage, scientific, and erotic photography. The author often emphasized that in these templates he primarily sought new impulses for the reform of the subject, and the content thus results from the transformation of painting itself. Sports photography allowed the capture of the dynamics of the human body in extreme perspectives, similar to dance or eroticism. Načeradský primarily reflects the expanded realm of human voyeurism and narcissism, enabled by the spread of publicly accessible technical reproduction (photography, TV, film). He thematizes the flood of visual information associated with the social relaxation of the late 1960s through a new reformatting of media sources. He often works with the de-contextualization of templates, integrating them into other visual and format contexts (Runner, 1967). He translates the phenomenon of dispersed attention into a divided image format (Wanted Man, 1967) and ambiguous numerical data lacking traceable semantic validity (Abduction from the Seraglio – Anthropometry, 1967). Everything here is in motion – figure, place, framework, subject, and message (Playboy Girls, 1967). Everything finds itself in the midst of a transformative process. The naked person here seems to be freeing themselves from old orders but simultaneously slowly losing a sense of the contexts and nuances of the new era, as well as the extent of their needs. The accelerated life of the late 1960s becomes a rapidly changing kaleidoscope of visual impulses and traces that disappear beyond the day's horizon as soon as they appear. The absurdity of the time is the acceleration that perhaps best characterizes the author's hybrid negation of socialist realism with pop art themes (Family, 1967). FIRST FLOOR Jiří Načeradský's works from 1973–1981 can be characterized as a clear entry into a completely different experience. This period is heralded by a transitional work that gave the entire exhibition its name – Beauty Unveiled (1969–74). The fragmented female nude painted according to the author's erotic collage marks the end of the 1960s and the entry into the upcoming normalization period of the 1970s. The emphasis on the deformation of the figure, its fragmentariness highlighted by the linear outlining of limbs, and a Bacon-like terrifyingly indistinct framework refer to a change in image dynamics, which now closes, cycles, stops, and compresses. In Načeradský's work, there is a gradual shift towards a static model of image construction, which brings with it a flat expression, radical stylization, and above all sharp colors, contributed by the artist's transition to acrylic paints in 1973–74. The emphasis on pure, bright color had its justification in this decade, primarily as a strategy of new expression, similar to Jiří Sopko's work. In the context of the time, one could speak of a kind of "color hysteria" that screams into the emptiness of an unfree, isolated, and grayly leveled world full of repetitive collective and sports rituals (Czech Tennis Players Play the Federation Cup, 1976). The private space of a person shrank to a world of banality, the "classless alcoholic pub society" (J.N.), a world of suppressed instincts, distorted desires, and unattainable dreams. The entire life content seemed to be dominated by an absurd mechanism devouring time (Invasion, 1977–1980). Narrative processes in Načeradský's paintings were reduced to simple schemes and all-dominating constructions (Radars, 1974). Some of them visually referred to the culture of normalization bedtime stories (Galactic Girls, 1976) and frantically ecstatic cartoon grotesques (Two Donalds, 1975), while others reflected female beings (Praying Mantises, 1974), which turned into disturbing and dangerous alien monsters (Praying Mantises and Ufes). The paintings underwent radical reduction, revealing structures and admitted schemes like the skeleton of painting gnawed to the bone. This entire development culminated in works around 1980, where only a summary sign with signal sexual markers remained of the figure, similar to the logic of monumental abbreviations of Czechoslovak architectural machinism (Superwoman. Portrait of J. Š., 1980). ATTIC The specific attic space, in the logic of the exhibition title Beauty Unveiled, is an improvised booth for the hardened viewer. Here, paintings with a strong erotic charge from the end of the author's career are concentrated. Praying Mantis Coral (2009) pairs with Alcohol (1993). Yellow Games (1992) and Golden Strings (2009) let everyday worries dissolve in the immediacy of erotic ecstasy. Beauty Unveiled gains in frenzy and hopelessness here. Love and feeling turn into a mechanism of never-ending anonymous pleasure. Eternal nirvana of an ecstatic state permeates time in a Kundera-like manner, regardless of the historical course of societal changes, wars, revolutions, and totalities. Načeradský's experienced melancholy in this respect remains ambiguously liberating and suffocating at the same time. Curators Petr Vaňous and Petr Mach

Source: (c) Galerie Villa Pellé