Group
Far Is My Journey
27. 3. - 5. 7. 2026 | Galerie Lázně LIberec
Curator: Michaela Kubišová
The beginning of the 19th century brings new ideas into Czech culture, a new philosophy that seeks to turn the individual’s gaze inward. It arrives in the form of the figure of a torn wanderer standing above an abyss, gazing dreamily into the distance to which he may one day arrive, contemplating the meaning of life and the significance of the individual within its cycle. What does the wanderer see? Weary of the Industrial Revolution, of human progress, of Enlightenment thought, he turns his gaze back into his soul, into the landscape both inner and outer, into an intimate experience, into a connection with nature, the land, the homeland, and history. Exactly as the German painter Caspar David Friedrich depicted him around 1818 in his painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
The wanderer whose footsteps we will follow is the Czech poet Karel Hynek Mácha. A genius who, during his short and turbulent life, managed to become a pioneer of Czech poetry and a source of inspiration for generations of poets and wanderers who sought to follow his path through the landscape and through literature. In 2026, it will be 190 years since his death.