In the Šumava paradise: pictures by Barbora Chlastáková

Barbora Chlastáková (pseudonym BaCha; *1983, Příbram) is a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno, where she studied from 2006 to 2012 under the tutelage of Martin Mainer and subsequently Luděk Rathouský. In 2008, she participated in a residency at the Facultad Bellas Artes (Cuenca, Spain). In 2016, she was an artist-in-residence at Khasi Hills in Meghalava, North India.

She regularly exhibits her work in the Czech Republic and abroad. Since starting her own family in 2018, she has lived and worked in Vimperk (Winterberg).

Barbora Chlastáková soon developed a distinctive style, characterized by the combination of figurative and abstract elements, underscored by a striking, often even expressive, use of color. Her perfectly mastered figures, as well as her feel for geometric ornamentation, allow her to convey insights into the world of primal forces, into a passionately lyrical, mysterious, dreamlike, yet at the same time unreservedly sincere and sometimes even rawly real world.

On the one hand, Barbora Chlastáková's paintings represent an artistic expression of the author's inner life, and on the other hand, they act like a magic mirror, a vortex that draws the viewer into the depths of their own subconscious.

The exhibition, prepared for the newly reconstructed rooms of Winterberg Castle , presents the artist's latest paintings, which are dedicated to the themes of transience, changeability, and the search for humanity. Barbora Chlastáková symbolically connects them to the Bohemian Forest landscape and to how the Bohemian Forest is depicted in the stories of Karel Klostermann

Even though her works were created independently of Klostermann's book " Im Böhmerwaldparadies" (In the Bohemian Forest Paradise ), she uses the medium of painting to update the essential meanings of this classic work of late 19th-century literature. She even depicted similar themes in which the melodramatic Bohemian Forest landscape, with all its color transformations, animals, people, and elements, plays a key role.

The Bohemian Forest inspired Klostermann and dozens of artists who depicted it in diverse ways, and it continues to inspire contemporary artists. Contemporary art and its interpretations are particularly well represented here by the works of Barbora Chlastáková and her exhibition "In the Bohemian Forest Paradise."