These memoirs, written by the art collector and connoisseur Richard Adam and published by the Moravian Gallery in Brno, charts over 40 years of his gradual submergence into modern Czech art, in particular painting, and its collecting from modest beginnings and total ignorance to the “holistic” insight into the most recent trends.

In his collection he has assembled extensive sets of paintings that represent the generations of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the noughties and the 2010s. Adam's essential collaboration with the Brno entrepreneur and art lover Miroslav Lekeš enabled him to develop his collecting interest further over the border, to Slovakia, Austria and mainly Germany. From 2006 until the end of 2015 he led the Wannieck /Adam/ Gallery in Brno, putting the city on the map as a hot spot for presenting the most up-to-date painting art. The exhibition in the Atrium of the Moravian Gallery, however, will show a different set of canvases with portraits made by artists to show respect to the collector and patron of contemporary art and which together with the published book pay homage to Richard Adam and all the enthusiasts without whom the contemporary art scene would be unthinkable.

Curator: Ondřej Chrobák

Moravian Gallery in Brno — Pražák Palace