Artchemo

Artchemo was possibly one of the first symposium to explore the possibilities of using plastics in art and certainly one of the boldest projects that the East Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice helped to organize. It was staged twice (in years 1968 and 1969) before being discontinued by the authorities who wanted to see it forgotted about. A complicatd political situation was brought to an end the first Artchemo by the Warsaw Pact invasion on the 21st August 1968. Artist mostly took their works home with them and were still completing them atthe beginning of 1969. The second symposium took place in a similarly unfavourable climate following year 1969. On the 11th June 1970 there was opened the first and the last exhibition presenting the results of the two Artchemo symposiums. When it came to en end, several of the works were taken by the artists, several were taken back to Pardubice and others vanished without a trace. Only two panels by Stanislav Kolíbal were received into the collection of the East Bohemian Gallery - the other exhibits were shifted up to an attic where, due to the indifference ofthe newly installed gallery administration, they were exposed to unfavourable climatic andstorage conditions. Despite this, some works were saved, though not in the gallery´s collection but in attics and private collections.

The East Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice tried to bring together again the works which were produced in Pardubice, and reflected on the idea of the whole event with the hindsight of more than twenty-five years in an exhibition presented besides in Pardubice in 1994/1995 in other czech and slovak cities (Praha, Zlín, Bratislava) which is accompanied by the catalogue. 
 
Participated artists at the Artchemo I. (1968): Jozef Jankovič, Věra Janoušková, Karel Malich, Karel Nepraš, Miloš Ševčík, and Miloš Urbásek. 

Participated artists at the Artchemo II. (1969): Jan Hendrych, Stanislav Kolíbal, Václav Mergl and Rudolf Volráb.