The Kupka works
A pioneer of abstraction in modern art, with one of the world's most significant holdings of his work here.
Hynek Moravec — CC BY 2.5 · Dennis G. Jarvis — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Paul Korecky — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Paul Korecky — CC BY-SA 2.0
The Trade Fair Palace is far larger and broader and includes international European artists. Museum Kampa is smaller, more focused, better sited and less tiring. With one hour, and if your day is in the Lesser Town: Kampa.
The building itself, the terrace and the riverside setting reward you even if you move quickly through the galleries. But if abstraction means nothing to you, the garden and outdoor sculptures are free and may be enough.
Three giant babies by David Černý on the grass, a line of yellow chairs on the river bank, and other changing works — all free and outdoors around the clock.
Charles Bridge in the morning, down to Kampa, the museum, then the Lennon Wall and the Church of Our Lady Victorious, finishing at the Vrtba Garden or the Petřín funicular.
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Museum Kampa occupies an old mill building on the Vltava bank on Kampa island, intelligently restored to combine old stone with modern glass additions. The collection covers modern art in central Europe and was assembled by Meda Mládková, a Czech who left the country after the war and spent decades abroad buying works by Czech artists the communist government would not let exhibit, then gave the whole collection to the city of Prague after 1989. Two figures dominate: František Kupka, among the first painters anywhere to make purely abstract pictures, and Otto Gutfreund, the Czech sculptor who worked most of his life in exile. Around them is a strong holding of 20th-century Czech, Slovak, Polish and Hungarian art — the art of an entire region that lived behind the Iron Curtain. An added pleasure: the museum terrace and courtyard open directly onto the river, with the "chairs" sculpture and Černý's babies in the garden in front. The place is quiet and elegant and rarely crowded, an excellent refuge on a wet day minutes from Charles Bridge.
A pioneer of abstraction in modern art, with one of the world's most significant holdings of his work here.
Czech Cubist sculpture of a kind with no real equivalent in the museums of western Europe.
A direct view over the Vltava and the Old Town from inside the museum — a break with a view and no crowd.
The collector bought work by artists banned from exhibiting while she was in exile, then gave the whole collection to Prague after 1989.
U Sovových mlýnů 2, Kampa Island, Prague 1