Arbor Vitae Societas

The Arbor vitae Publishers was established in 1992. Since its founding, it has focused on publishing books on art as well as exhibition organization and production. The publishing house divides its production into several series – the De Arte series, with 30 titles to date, publishes diaries, essays, sentences and memoires of prominent Czech and international painters, sculptors and architects, while the Texts on Architecture series comprises the essential works of Czech and international thinking about architecture. The Vera Effigies series presents textual monographs of important artists from the turn of the 20th century (such as Karel Hlaváček, Alfred Kubin, Arnold Schönberg, Edvard Munch). The Louisa series publishes fairy tales and legends illustrated by contemporary Czech painters and graphic artists and the AV series offers poetry, fiction and literary essays accompanied by illustrations. The monographs and catalogues of Czech and international artists have won many awards in the Most Beautiful Book competition. In 2006, Arbor Vitae was awarded the annual prize of the Czech Literary Fund's Foundation – the Prize for cultivation of the Czech book market.

Arbor Vitae organizes exhibitions, always accompanied by catalogues and monographs, in prestigious gallery premises from the Prague Castle, the Municipal House in Prague, the City Gallery Prague, the Exhibition Hall Mánes, the Moravian Gallery in Brno, the Gallery Klatovy/Klenová, the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové, the Gallery of Fine Arts in Náchod, the Olomouc Museum of Art, the Art Gallery in Ostrava through to smaller regional galleries. The long list of our projects includes, for example, the exhibition of Eva and Jan Švankmajer, titled “Food”, held at the Prague Castle; František Skála's series of exhibitions, which attracted almost 100,000 visitors in 2004–2005; the exhibition titled “Through Disquiet to God. Sacral Art in Bohemia and Moravia in the Years 1870–1914” in the Olomouc Museum of Art and a continuing exhibition, Rose Garden. Handwritten Prayer Books from the 18th and 19th Centuries. (The Collections of Jan Poš); the exhibition “Eva Kmentová” in the Exhibition Hall Mánes and in the Moravian Gallery in Brno; the exhibition titled “In Morbid Colours. Art and the Idea of Decadence in the Bohemian Lands, 1880–1914”, held in the Municipal House in Prague; the exhibition Quarrels of Vision/Facets of Modernity at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century in the Ostrava Gallery of Fine Arts; an exhibition of works by a famous Czech artist titled “Karel Teige and Typography” in the City Gallery Prague; and the exhibition project “The Brussels Dream – Expo 58. The Czechoslovak Presence at Expo 58 in Brussels and the Lifestyle of the Early 1960s”, also held in the City Gallery Prague, which was, with over 30,000 visitors, the second most visited exhibition of 2008. Arbor Vitae has recently also transferred some of its activities abroad; it has a tradition of co-operation with Czech Centres around the world, and it has collaborated with the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava. The last project, the exhibition “Decadence. Bohemian Lands 1880–1914”, taking place simultaneously in the Brussels City Hall (Hôtel de Ville de Bruxelles) and the Félicien Rops Museum in Namur, is the largest exhibition of the Czech presidency of the Council of the European Union.

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