Jan Hendrych: Statues and Bridges 25. 4. 2023 – 21. 5. 2023

This year, a new footbridge will open in Prague, connecting Karlín and Holešovice. In the middle of it, on the Štvanice Island, sculptor Jan Hendrych, in cooperation with architects Petr Tej, and the Prague City Gallery, installed a sculpture of a woman that could be the personification of the island or the soul of the new bridge. The exhibition in the community space Kobka 17 on the Smíchov Riverside thematically focuses on the Štvanice sculpture and other Hendrych’s artworks involving bridges and footbridges. Since the 1970s, Hendrych has kept returning to the motif of objects connecting two shores. Having made numerous bridge-themed sculptures, he gradually moved to abstractions and expressive forms, introducing the symbolics related to the attributes of the Bohemian saint John Nepomucene; the latter was, due to his life story and martyrdom, often depicted as patron of shipmen and raftsmen, and his statue was built by many bridges as a symbol of happy return. The mutual relationships between sculptures and bridges in Jan Hendrych’s works can be also understood as the personification of the relationship between art and architecture, people and landscape, or earthly life and faith in higher spiritual realms.