ART(IST) TEACHER

ART(IST) TEACHER

September 25 – October 17, 2025, Pitevna Gallery, Brno

In the title of the exhibition, we identify artists and teachers, teachers of art, and, with a little help from German, we also identify the assertion that art is a teacher. All of this is meant to suggest, even though art history does not emphasize it, that the roles of artist and teacher have always been closely related.

Even in ancient times, artists trained their successors in their workshops. With the advent of the modern era, this professional training became institutionalized, art academies appeared, and with them, academicism and academics. A little later, with the development of general education, the position of drawing teachers and later art teachers emerged, who in some cases were also artists. Finally, in relatively recent times, the dual role of artist and teacher has begun to be discussed from yet another perspective. In connection with reflections on how to make art a more relevant social force, these two positions have more or less merged in some projects. Authors, as a kind of artist-educators, often operating outside the realm of formal education and focusing on target groups other than the usual ones, experiment with alternative, processual, cooperative, and interdisciplinary strategies. Their goal is to develop natural, open, and democratic knowledge.

These and many other positions of artists and teachers in one person naturally generate a number of specific experiences, questions, and problems, which have become the theme and challenge of this exhibition. The participating authors undoubtedly have something to say about them. They gained their experience first from the perspective of pupils and then students of art schools, and today many of them work as teachers and, as active members of the art scene, reflect on current discussions devoted to the relationship between art and education. This has also meant that they have filled the curatorial framework with a rich mixture in which a wide variety of perspectives, themes, and strategies come together in a stimulating way. Nevertheless, they can apparently be divided into two basic categories. On the one hand, there are critical reflections that ask us questions such as: What is knowledge itself? To what extent are the categories we operate with valid and applicable? Can our traditional academic practices really open up space for true knowledge? How do the roles examined, in both a positive and negative sense, influence their bearers? Another group consists of documentation and objects that present various educational and research practices. They are original, experimental, and current, and in accordance with Joseph Beuys’ statements, we can consider them an integral part of the artistic activity of their initiators and participants. The photograph documenting the courageous struggle of Serbian students for freedom and justice can be seen as a kind of full stop, or rather an exclamation mark, to the entire exhibition. In these times of many crises, it reminds us that knowledge also entails the acceptance of personal responsibility. It is precisely this that I would like to highlight, along with open-mindedness, creativity, imagination, and the ability to listen and share, as an important link between the roles of artist and teacher, or art and education.

Ondřej Navrátil

Participating Artists:

• Mirjana Blagojev, Serbia.
• Manuel Bru, Spain.
• Natalia Brzezińska, Poland.
• Beatriz Castro, Spain.
• Cecilia Eguiburu, Spain.
• Juan Manuel García, Spain.
• Reyes González, Spain.
• Vladimír Havlík, Czech Republic.
• Tomasz Kalitko, Poland.
• Petr Kovář, Czech Republic.
• Željko Mandić, Serbia.
• Jesús Montoya, Spain.
• Laura Murcia, Spain.
• Ondřej Navrátil, Czech Republic.
• Františka Orságová, Czech Republic.
• Antonia Pujol, Spain.
• Carmen Ruiz de Almirón, Spain.
• Agustín Sánchez, Italy.
• Maite Segués, Spain.
• Predrag Uzelac, Serbia.
• Milan Vlaški, Serbia.

Curator: Ondřej Navrátil

Participating Institutions: Academy of Arts, University of Novi Sad (Serbia); Department of Art, Faculty of Education, Masaryk University (Czech Republic); Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Granada (Spain); Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts (Poland); Politecnico delle Arti di Bergamo (Italy).

Collaborating Institutions in the Academy Art Gallery Interchange Network: Academy of Arts, University of Novi Sad (Serbia); Department of Art, Faculty of Education, Masaryk University (Czech Republic); Faculty of Arts, Universidad de la República (Uruguay); Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Granada (Spain); Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts (Poland); Politecnico delle Arti di Bergamo (Italy); Universidad de los Lagos (Chile).

Dates: September 26 – October 17, 2025
Venue: Pitevna Gallery, Brno, Czech Republic.