"The greatest art always returns you to the vulnerability of the human situation." FRANCIS BACON

The exhibition provides a brief look at the generation of Czech artists who helped bridge the difficult years that lay between the liberal art scene of the second half of the 1960s and the thaw that eventually came about with the gradual implosion of the Czechoslovak Communist regime in the second half of the 1980s. It is neither intended to map out the individual artists¹ careers, nor the Czech art scene as such. Instead, it seeks to provide viewers with an insight into the work of a number of artists who rose to the challenge of dealing with the often brutal and unpalatable questions of life in a country that was for many years stagnated by ideological dogma, a country whose mainstream society was sterilised by the systematic prioritisation of mundane material concerns over intellectual ones. The loose affinity between the viewpoints and expression of these and number of other artists ultimately crystallised in the forming of the 12/15 Better Late Than Never group, a milestone in the resurgence of independent culture in Czechoslovakia during the late 1980s. Although membership in the 12/15 group is what the six Czech participants have in common, this project is not meant as a 12/15 group show - instead, it aims to present through them a broader view of the generation that they represent; its character, evolution and significance in Czech post-war culture, and ultimately raise certain issues relating to 20th-century Czech art as a whole.

The material in the catalogue relating to their earlier development provides a basis on which, it is hoped, their new work will be better understood by non-Czech viewers. Despite the fact that conditions for the artist have radically altered since the Velvet Revolution of 1989 returned democracy to the Czech state, the issues which became the core of the work of the artists featured at this show have lost little of their relevance; society continues to face the struggle of extracting meaning out of the past, the present, human relationships, and our place in the world. Although formed in a climate barely comprehensible to viewers who have never experienced life in a totalitarian state, these issues have an inescapable, almost intuitive, message transcending the immediate contexts separating one country, one world, from another.

Although modest in scale, the project brings together the work of several of the finest Czech artists of recent decades. Their story is highly representative of the issues faced by moddenr Czech art as a whole: those of the creative individual standing at the crossroads of the past and present, East abd West, freedom and non-freedom. The consistency of their beliefs, the authenticity of their involvement and courage to actively confront a seemingly endless series of human uncertainties echo Graham Greene’s conviction that "I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate."

Richard Drury, Exhibition curator