Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
there'saLanzBulldog,oneofthemostpopularinterwarGermantractors,withitsdistinctive,
easy-to-maintain hot bulb engine, and a very fetching American MrCormick-Deering tract-
or in lilac and red livery. Several upstairs galleries are given over to temporary exhibitions
throughout the year, and outside there's a small city farm with hens, very large rabbits and a
couple of Wallachian sheep.
Veletržní palác (Trade Fair Palace) - Nineteenth- and twentieth-century
art
Dukelských hrdinů 47 • Tues-Sun 10am-6pm • 240Kč including audio-guide in English • 224 301 122,
ngprague.cz
• Tram #12 or #17 to Veletržní palác
Situated at the corner of Dukelských hrdinů and Veletržní, some distance from the nearest
metro station,
Veletržní palác
gets nothing like the number of visitors it should. Not only
doesthebuildinghousetheNational Gallery'sexcellent
nineteenth-andtwentieth-century
art
collection, but it's also a sight in itself. A seven-storey building constructed in 1928 by
Oldřich Tyl and Josef Fuchs, it is Prague's ultimate functionalist masterpiece, not so much
fromtheoutside,butcertainlyinside,whereitsgleamingwhitevastnessissuitablyawesome.
Even the normally hypercritical Le Corbusier, who visited the building the year it was com-
pleted,wasimpressed:“SeeingtheTradeFairPalace,Irealizedhowtomakelargebuildings,
having so far built only several relatively small houses on a low budget.”
Themainexhibitionhallisoncemoreusedfortradefairs,withtheNárodnígalerieconfined
to the north wing. Nevertheless, the gallery is both big and bewildering, stretching over six
floors,andvirtually impossible toview inits entirety; themost popularsection isthe
French
art
collectiononthethirdfloor.Fromthegroundflooryoucanstareupattheglass-roofedat-
rium, a glorious space for wacky modern pieces of art, overlooked by six floors of balconies.
First floor: foreign art
As good a place as any to start is the bluntly entitled
Foreign Art
exhibition that occupies
the first floor. There are one or two gems here, beginning with
Gustav Klimt
's mischievous
Virgins
, a mass of naked bodies and tangled limbs painted over in psychedelic colours, plus
oneofthesquarelandscapesheenjoyedpaintingduringhissummerholidaysintheSalzkam-
mergut.
EgonSchiele
'smothercamefromtheSouthBohemiantownofČeskýKrumlov,thesubject
of a tiny, gloomy, autumnal canvas,
Dead Town
. The gallery also owns one of Schiele's most
popular female portraits, misleadingly entitled
The Artist's Wife
, an unusually graceful and
gentle watercolour of a seated woman in green top and black leggings. In contrast,
Pregnant
Woman and Death
is a morbidly bleak painting, in which Schiele depicts himself as both the
monk of death and the life-giving mother.
Look out, too, for two canvases by
Edvard Munch
, and for
Oskar Kokoschka
's typically
vigorous landscapes, dating from his brief stay in Prague in the 1930s.
