The first year took place in 2001 and was organized by the Council of Europe together with the European Union. At that time, millions of people in a total of 45 countries participated in the organized events. The theme of the individual activities was the celebration of linguistic diversity in Europe and the promotion of foreign language learning. Therefore, the main objectives of the European Day of Languages ​​include, in particular, increasing public awareness of the importance of language education, promoting multilingualism and intercultural understanding, promoting the linguistic and cultural wealth of Europe, and supporting lifelong language learning in and out of school. Languages ​​open doors to new friendships, new cultures and new opportunities and make life easier when traveling abroad. The European Day of Languages ​​is an opportunity to celebrate all languages ​​spoken in Europe, including minority languages. As every year, this year too there will be a number of activities organized throughout Europe. Detailed information is available, for example, on the website of the European Day of Languages.

From the gallery's collections  we have chosen for this day the painting by Karel Valter Dialog from 1991. Painter and graphic artist Karel Valter (February 17, 1909, České Budějovice – November 17, 2006, Tábor) is connected with the landscape of South Bohemia. In the 1930s, he was a member of the České Budějovice art group Linie. The authors of Linie were mostly educators in civilian life, as was Karel Valter. He remained faithful to this profession all his life – after the Second World War he taught in Tábor at the People's School of Art there. In addition to intensive artistic activity, he also occasionally composed chamber music. Valter's pre-war creative period in Linie, as well as others (Josef Bartuška, Oldřich Nouza, Emil Pitter and others), despite being separated from art centers, was characterized by an avantgarde focus (mythologizing modern civilization, emphasis on experimental art techniques) and familiarity with the then progressive currents in art (poetism, constructivism, surrealism). The group was very active, publishing, among other things, its own magazine. This dynamic practice of České Budějovice artists was disrupted by the advent of the Second World War, during which Karel Valter was imprisoned for his resistance activities in the Terezín and later Buchenwald concentration camps. After the war, Valter focused mainly on oil painting, and the landscape became his lifelong theme. Informed by modern artistic tendencies from expressionism to surrealism, he was always on the side of its realistic portrayal. From his teaching experience, he also included the instinctiveness of children's creative expression in his register of resources. He conceived his landscapes as scenery of layered natural events, human dramas, used diverse perspectives and expressive color combinations. His pictorial space is characterized by the frequent use of a raised horizon and a certain softness, as the signs of events, phenomena and things float up and recede before the viewer's eyes rather than being set in some perspective vanishing point.

The work Dialog is dominated by a pair of bare darkened trunks at the edge of the field, they are conceived collectively in poetic shorthand – they can also resemble human silhouettes or torsos. Mutual neighborliness is their fate, and the debates between them take place in the crisscrossing and tangle of branches, on which the sun rarely rests in the autumn time. It illuminates the twisting of bodies, the web between them. The painting can be perceived as a meditation on time – a reflection on the interaction of various natural forces, on the circulation of substances, on the position of man in his own life space. Valter's post-war landscape painting does not lose its freedom, but the author turns away from the modernist utopian tuning – the creative act is more intimate.

Jana Bojanovská, September 26, 2024

The text about Karel Valter was part of the work of the month of November 2016, the author is Jaroslav Grodl.