The Cheb Niches

Zbyněk Illek, director of Cheb’s Galerie4, was the spiritual father of an original project called The Cheb Niches. While making photos in the streets of old Cheb, this passionate photographer noticed that there were empty niches and cartouches on the façades of many historical buildings, which used to contain small statues or signs of the house owners. The statuettes often indicated what sort of artisan lived and worked in the building. Many of these sculptures had vanished without trace and the niches in the walls were left empty.

 

Artists from Galerie4 located about 25 such places and selected one-third of them for renovation. Afterwards they addressed noted artists from all over the Czech Republic and in 2005 ten applicants took part in a seminar, where they learned detailed facts about the town’s history, its streets and buildings, and about the former appearance of its historical centre. At the end of the meeting, they could chose a specific building for which they then created their artwork. In the first stage of this financially demanding project, four statuettes were given the “green light”, and these were festively unveiled in September 2007. Next year, another four sculptures followed and, in 2011, on the occasion of the 950th anniversary of the founding of Cheb, the remaining, still-empty niches were filled with works of art.

 

The revived niches can be inspected during a stroll through a large part of the historical centre of Cheb, which was declared an Urban Heritage Conservation Area in 1981. While the sculptures in the niches will not amaze you with their dimensions, they will certainly attract your attention with their distinctive artistic concept. It should also be noted that most of them took many months to create. Therefore, as you tilt your head back and look upwards to the newly-filled niches, keep in mind that what you see is the very best that Czech artists have produced to beautify the streets and squares of Cheb.

 

Based on the text in the book “The Wandering Camera 10”, Freitag and Berndt, 2010:

 

1. The Singing Butcher

Luděk Vystyd

“Who else can sing on Jateční (Slaughter) Street than…? We need humour in art.”

 

2. A Little Girl with a Plush Toy

Miro Žačok

“The sculpture called A Little Girl is meant to portray a girl who could have once lived in the building or in the town, and who had to leave it in 1946. This can be a Sudeten German girl or a Jewish girl. What I’m concerned with is that the errors of us adults affect innocent and defenceless children. I also sculpted my younger daughter and when she grows up, she can come and see herself.”

 

3. Dreamer

Eva Vejražková

“The form of the square-shaped cartouche in the façade of the house on 13, Jateční Street inspired me to make a low relief with a figural motif depicting a human figure. I wanted to enhance the square-ness of the cartouche’s format and, by dividing the figure with a cross into four parts, the attributes of the four Evangelists began to emerge next to the arms, head and legs I was modelling; the face that had originally looked open-eyed into the street was imbued with a dreamy, meditative expression. In its dreaming, the Dreamer luxuriates in the beauty of the world under the protection of spiritual principles within it. Even at the very beginning of my work I wished to insert not only a decorative element into the empty, square space, but also a patron and symbol of protection of the building and its inhabitants. I hope my Dreamer will become just that.”

 

4. The Third Eye

Jaroslav Valečka

“My cartouche was inspired by the typical house signs, accounts and folktales related to those buildings. The cartouche is called The Third Eye that can perceive the unperceivable, it is a sort of gateway into the soul. The head is based on the traditional portrait of a queen or noblewoman.”

 

5. Saint Francis of Assisi

Miloslav Svoboda

“The niche with St. Francis of Assisi was made for an entirely prosaic reason. In 2005 I began working on sketches for a two-metre-tall, painted statue of St. Francis of Assisi for what has so far been my largest exhibition that was held in the context of the Landscape Exhibition project in Cheb in 2006. As I was able to exhibit my work directly in the Monastery of St. Francis, the selection of the crucial work for my exhibition was quite clear. The opportunity to design a painted statue of such significance does not come every day. I paid particular attention to the paintings that cover the entire surface of the sculpture, depict scenes from his life. As this is a saint of extraordinary importance, the care I devoted to selecting themes from his life was likewise exceptional. The concrete description of my work would add up to a small book. The preparations for this work took about one year.”

 

(The two-metre-tall statue of St. Francis of Assisi is placed in the cloister of the Franciscan Monastery.)

 

6. The Virgin and Child

Zdenka Svobodová

“Biblical subject-matter is close to my heart and formerly there was a Virgin and Child statuette in this niche. This inspired me and so I created a new Virgin and Child.”

 

7. Three Fish

“My work is called Fish or In the Pond. The cartouche was evocative of a pond and the fish were sort of missing there, so I simply added them. I had several more abstract ideas but in the end I decided for one that I thought passers-by could recollect better.

 

8. A Saint

Anna Vystydová

“For years I used to pass the empty niche on No. 14, Židovská (Jewish) Street and I always imagined a female figure in the oval frame. The original sculptures in niches of historical buildings were mostly of a religious subject. This is why my sculpture A Saint is derived from the attributes of St. Catherine. However, the figure can also be regarded as an ordinary young girl.”

 

9. AngelA

Jiří Černý

“While documentation on the niches was in preparation, I found this niche high up, almost in heaven. There are angels in heaven. All you find in churches are small, naked cherubs, usually boys. When an angel is depicted as an adult figure, it usually has a female countenance, but is already so covered up that it is not clear whether it is a woman or a man. This is why AngelA is a full-bosomed angel.”

 

10. Secret

Jiří Černý

“This cartouche implies that something has been created, which is developing and growing, but what this will once become remains a secret.”

 

11. Saint Christopher

Vít Vejražka

“When I went to have a look at this cartouche, I wanted something to be here that would suit the place. I recalled the legend of St. Christopher that I as a teacher once told my pupils at school. A story about a giant who wished to serve only the greatest of kings and so he wished to serve Jesus Christ. A pilgrim told him he would serve Jesus if he carried people over a river in flood. One time, he was carrying a child who was becoming ever more heavy – this was Jesus and with him all the burdens of the world. Jesus named the giant Christophorus (Christopher) – Christbearer.”

 

12. Two

Jan Samec

“My relief represents two faces of young men that I loosely adopted from the appearance of Michelangelo’s Slaves. These are two relatives, perhaps brothers, who are probably in some sort of tension, dispute or argument. Yet despite these negative emotions, the two protagonists must stay and live together, or side by side… On a symbolic level, we could find an allusion here to the coexistence of Czechs and Germans.”

 

13. King John

Anna Vystydová

“Formerly, the small niche in the wall of the building on Jánské náměstí (John’s Square) held a statuette of undefined appearance. The inhabitants of the house called it “Our King John”. In the early 1960s, the sculpture was taken away, allegedly for purposes of restoration, but it was never returned to the building. This is why I called it King John.”

 

14. Good Morning

Pavel Drda

“Cheb is a beautiful town and I truly love it. I wish to bring amusement with every one of my sculptures and this I succeeded to do in Cheb.”

 

15. David and Goliath

Jaroslav Róna

“I wanted a sculpture for the niche that is figural and has a biblical subject because this is simply most appropriate for a medieval town. I’ve been attracted to David and Goliath since my childhood, mainly on account of a song by Voskovec and Werich and also because I love stories where someone who is small and weak wins over an evil ogre. And also because when someone who is little sits on a huge head, it is terribly grotesque. I used a photograph of the present Dalai Lama at about the age of fourteen as the model for the head of David. I used a photograph of the head of the American boxer Mike Tyson as the model for the head of Goliath. My intention was to stand in opposition the symbols of physical brutality and of spiritual emancipation. The sculpture is a symbol of hope for all those oppressed.

I have become very fond of the town of Cheb. In my opinion, Cheb is the third most beautiful town in the Czech Republic, after Prague and Český Krumlov, so that every visitor must be very fond of it, even without the sculptures installed there.”

 

(Note: There is another sculpture by Jaroslav Róna’s, called Cuttlefish, in Cheb.)

 

16. Mary

Jindra Viková

“I absolutely loved this unique project – that of creating art for empty niches which had formerly held sculptures. It also involves a bit of mystery and I assumed that statues of mostly a religious character occupied the niches. My Virgin Mary and Child is the eternal, mother-and-child theme, a kind of ancient, timeless symbol.”

 

17. Neighbours

Stanislava Konvalinková

The faces standing out of the wall represent observers, the house’s protectors, quiet neighbours, witnesses to events, who remember more than others. Originally the Neighbours sculpture was intended for one of the houses on Úzká (Narrow) Street that stood on the boundary between the town and the Jewish ghetto. Owing to Cheb’s recent and more distant history, its placement on náměstí Jiřího z Poděbrad (George of Poděbrady Square) is ultimately even more symbolic.”

 

 

 

Pictures

Files for download