zorka ságlová

1942, Humpolec - 2003, Prague

The ceremonial opening of the exhibition takes place on Thursday 5th of March 2026 at 6PM.

Thanks to her innovative and original work, Zorka Ságlová is one of the most inspiring and notable Czech artists of the second half of the 20th century. For nearly two decades, from 1970 to 1988, she was banned from exhibiting by the former Czechoslovak regime. Only with time we can now fully appreciate the scope and consistency of her artistic vision.

It was primarily an exhibition entitled Někde něco (Somewhere Something) at the Václav Špála Gallery in Prague in 1969 that caused outrage. By installing bales of hay and straw in a prestigious gallery setting, Ságlová challenged expectations of what art should be. This gesture was perceived as a dishonorable act in this elite space.

Paradoxically, the years of enforced isolation brought her creative freedom. The focus and complete authenticity of her individual artistic cycles, her rich imagination, playfulness, and handiness /she graduated in 1966 from Antonín Kybal‘s textile studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design/ helped her work appear systematic and comprehensive, yet at the same time solitary, intimate, pure, and sometimes even provocative. An important companion throughout her life was her husband, the photographer Jan Ságl. As her intellectual partner, he systematically documented her work.

In the early 1960s, Ságlová’s paintings were infl uenced by Informel, with thick layers of paint and embedded found materials. In the mid-1960s, this expressive approach brought way to a more ordered, geometric structure, culminating in large-scale monochrome reliefs.

At the same time, she began to create land art projects and happenings carried out with a close circle of friends. For Ságlová, land art was never a static intervention in the landscape; it was a shared act, open to chance and participation.

In the 1970s, working quietly in her studio, she returned to the demanding medium of tapestry and created several large-format woven works. She discovered the motif of the rabbit as a recurring theme in her art between 1979 and 2000. Ságlová explored its meanings across cultures and histories.

In the cycle Animals, drawings of animals are reduced to simplifi ed symbols reminiscent of children‘s drawings. Similarities to children‘s drawings can also be found in the Landscapes series from the 1990s.

After 1994, Ságlová began creating overpaintings on damask fabric. The structure of the fabric creates a repeating geometric pattern, which is partially covered by the repainting. The result is a series of beautiful structural works from the Sheilas series /1998–2001/, which belong among the highlights of the artist‘s work.

In recent years, there has been much talk about so-called women‘s art. I think it would be a mistake to associate Zorka Ságlová‘s work solely with feminist and gender issues. She was an open-minded artist with a high degree of self-refl ection who, in certain situations, expressed herself using materials and techniques traditionally attributed to women, but the context of her work clearly transcends the framework of this fashionable classifi cation.