Pearls on the Wall: Sales and Collector's Exhibition, 2016

At the Christmas exhibition of the Gema Gallery, visitors had the opportunity to purchase small original works by leading Czech artists at discounted, subsidized prices. E. Adamcová, J. Bičovská, V. Bláha, V. Horálek, J. Kačer, P. Mühlbauer, I. Ouhel, J. Plieštik, J. Sopko provided their works.

The exhibition also included a tribute to long-time friend of Galerie Gema and the great art collector Luboš Hromádka (1931 - 2016), in the form of a small exhibition of his work. Lubomír Hromádka was born on April 26, 1931 in Prague into a tailor's family and, like his father, devoted himself to this profession. He was a lover, connoisseur and collector of modern art, which he inherited from his father, and anyone who ever visited his apartment in Vinohrady, Prague, was abducted by the scope of his collection. Who would look in vain for a piece of free wall - works of art hung wherever the eye could see. The only exception was the library, which again hid more than one gem of art history literature. Mr. Hromádka, although he had only completed his primary schooling (he was the son of a bourgeois tradesman, could not continue his studies), learned English himself and wrote about exhibition catalogs in various world museums and galleries during the Iron Curtain, when he could no longer visit exhibitions in person. He surpassed many graduate experts in terms of knowledge, but he always remained a modest admirer of beauty. His natural view and sense of art were gratefully acknowledged by the artists themselves, and a close friendship bound him to many. From the older generation, let's name, for example, Kamil Lhoták, František Hudeček, František Gross or Miroslav Holý, from the younger ones, Václav Boštík, Jiří and Daisy Mrázek, Zbyšek Sion and many others.
In 1991, he was at the birth of our Gema Gallery, under his auspices her first exhibitions were created and he remained a friend until the last days. In February of this year, doctors diagnosed him with an insidious disease, which he bravely struggled with and made the hard days of the disease more enjoyable by a live study of art literature and then returned to his once popular activity, namely to paint some variations on his favorite painter - the already mentioned Kamil Lhoták or his beloved French painter Maurice Estèv. Although a slightly uncertain hand can be seen in the drawings, they have the power of sincere interest, a great sense of color and composition.