GREEN SPACE

Troja Château
Tue – Sun (except Fri) 10.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.,
Fri 1.00 p.m. – 6.00 p.m., garden to 7.00 p.m.

From June through October of the current year, Troja Château will be hosting already the third season of the project Green Space. The garden at Troja is designed along the lines of a unique Baroque-style geometric pattern drawing on the model of Italian composite garden landscape. In tune with its original historical concept, it involves the ideal symbiosis of architecture, aquatic elements, sculpture, and greenery. Apart from the garden´s historical sculptural decoration, this year´s event will present an open group exhibition of contemporary art featuring works by four Czech women sculptors each of whom has offered a sculptural assemblage for display on the garden´s upper parterre.
Since its inception, the project as a whole has been aimed at initiating a new tradition of presenting modern figurative sculpture in Troja Château´s gardens, thereby making the tour of the château grounds still more attractive for the general public with whom the garden has long been a popular visiting site. Indeed, the château garden´s environment offers itself as a venue suited for interaction between historical surroundings and modern-time art creations (not only figurative, as the event´s previous editions have proved).
In our time, visual art often happens to be supplanted in public areas by various other modern media and large-scale billboards, which is also why the gallery has intended to bring an alternative to the trend by setting new sculpture in the natural context of open-air space; moreover, the displays´ combination with greenery clearly enhances the impact of most artifacts.
This year´s show brings together artists of different generations. Daniela Vinopalová-Vodáková is represented in many public and private collections, is a member of the Umělecká Beseda /Artists Society/, and has likewise earned repute as a jewellery designer; she chose for display at Troja one of her earlier sculptures in concrete dating from the 1960s, by now a classic, with overlapping geometric and organic forms.
Jaromíra Němcová, who has created a number of her works during various sculpture symposiums, has a preference for work in stone, and successfully tackles large-scale sculptural formats; likewise active as a printmaker, she currently couples her artistic career with teaching at the Faculty of Restoration of Pardubice University. Her contribution to the Troja outdoor show comprises "recycled" (her own term) reliefs with Baroque-style sculptural motives, evoking with a sense of urgency the classic theme of memento mori.
In their turn, Monika Immrová and Zuzana Kačerová are members of the youngest, up-and-coming generation of artists. While both are graduates of Professor Zeithammel´s studio at the Academy of Art in Prague, each has evolved an individual idiom of her own. Monika Immrová´s stark objects provoke by their seemingly simple yet at the same time highly distinct form, achieved by the artist´s work with the equilibrium of material volumes in the correlation of twinned shapes, attaining all but unwittingly a representation of the perennial principle of contrast and unity translated into monumental format. Zuzana Kačerová works in stone, along a concept involving free interaction of comparatively small-scale thoroughly worked out elements harking back to the ancient tradition of similar visual elements characteristic for Czech architecture and sculpture.
On the whole, the display offers to visitors of the Troja Château an opportunity to see the output of these artists, otherwise not so widely known, and to appreciate its impact in harmony with the space of the premises´ stately garden.

Admission: free
Exhibition curator: Petra Hoftichová

Troja Château

 

Count Václav Vojtěch of Šternberk started building of the early Baroque Troja Château in 1679. The family of Šternberk was one of the oldest Czech noble families and the Troja Château was intended to honour its owner.
The architect of the Troja Château was Jean Baptiste Mathey, who was of French origin. In the design he drew on the experience of his sojourn in Italy and was inspired with the type of Roman ex-urban villa.  zde
The central and dominant space in the building is the large hall, from which runs a corridor with adjacent saloons on both sides. The sides of the building are vertically and horizontally completed with two-storeyed tower belvederes.
The sculptural decoration of the double-flight stairs leading to the garden was entrusted to the great Dresden artists George and Paul Hermann. The monumental sculptures decorating the stairs represent the fight of Titans and ancient gods. Each sculpture on the perimeter of the stairs represents an ancient god, daytime, season and continent allegories.
The painting works, on the castle´s ground floor, are mainly the work of Carpoforo Tencalla, and, on the first floor, of Francesco Marchetti and his son Giovanni Francesco. To complete the illusionary decoration of the large main hall, the building owner called for Flemish painters Abraham and Isaac Godynov.

The Troja Château is a striking and remarkable building. We should call it a villa rather than a château, since it is an echo of the magnificent Roman suburban villas seen by its builder Wenzel Adalbert Count von Sternberg on his Grand Tour. The spacious villas in the middle of endless gardens engaged him so much that he decided to bring a piece of the Eternal City back to his native land. The young count made fortunate choices in choosing the plot of land and the artists who were to realize his dream.
The Roman villa was always an oasis of pleasure, a place of relaxation, as well as a gallery where the proud owner could gather together his art works. Troja is such a villa; born under the benevolent eight-pointed star of the Sternberg line and surrounded by picturesque vineyards and a murmuring river.
The timeless Arcadian dream was simultaneously a very contemporary dream which mirrored the ambitions of its educated and cultivated builder for a place in the political and social sun. The ceremonial point of the building, which was not intended as a permanent residence but rather for celebrations, was to provide - in the villa itself - a convenient place for Emperor Leopold I and his hunters to rest from their labours.
To this idea is connected the concept of the building as a programmatic celebration of the power and glory of the Habsburg line. The main object and dream of its builder was to receive the Emperor; however, the last time Leopold I stayed in Prague was in 1679-1680, when the construction of the villa had only just started, and so the count had to wait until 1702 to welcome Leopold's son, the Emperor Joseph I, in Troja Château.