Applied Arts

The sub-collection of the applied arts belongs to the youngest collections of the Olomouc Museum of Art. It was founded in 1997 by its curator and its soul Anežka Šimková. The acquisitions were focused on creating a complete and strictly selective collection, which would present the changes of life style and design during the 19th, 20th and 21st century of the Czech territory with overlapping to Central European and world context. The collection is focused on seating, as chairs and armchairs do play a relevant role in art history for their presenting of aesthetic, style and social connotations and meanings. To complete the character of the production or of an author’s work, there are some pieces of other furniture, too. Furthermore, the collection includes some artistic textiles (e.g. tapestries Antonín and Ludmila Kybal), ceramics, lights, stained glass by Karel Svolinský and others.

There are some specifics of the collection, too: the bentwood furniture by Thonet and Khon, especially the sets from the 19th and 20th century designed by Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, Otto Prutscher, Gustav Siegel, Otto Wagner or Jan Kotěra. Furthermore, we can find here works designed by Anton Hanak, Dušan Jurkoviče and others. There is a valuable and quite complete set of tubular furniture from the 20s and 30s of the 20th century. The particular pieces were designed by architects Marcela Breuer, Mies van der Rohe and also by the Moravian Jindřich Halabala (from the UP factory). The American, German, Italian, French and Czech design from the 60s and 70s is represented by names as Verner Panton, Ernst Moeckl, Giancarlo Piretti, Yves Klein, Miroslav Navrátil; from the Czech post-modern works, there are some extraordinary units as chairs and armchairs by Milan Knížák and the authors of the Atika group – Jiřího Pelcl, Jaroslav Šusta jun., Jiří Javůrek, Bohuslav Horák and Vít Cimbura.

In 2011, the major part of the collection of applied arts was presented during the exhibition called Do Not Sit Down This Time. Anežka Šimková presented here about 120 pieces of seating furniture and a catalogue accompanying the exhibition. The publication is sold out now and only available as a rare antique piece in a few second-hand bookshops.

The numerously modest set of objects of applied arts (180 items in total) as a part of the sub-collection of applied arts is often used during the exhibition projects of Olomouc Museum of Art and other institutions, too.