The exhibition Heptameron appropriates the name of one of the erotic works of the French Renaissance, "a prodigal wealth of stories in a state of continuous metamorphosis," as Jindřich Štyrský characterized it, to trace the transformation of the relationship of distant periods of time, which affect each other as a trauma, but also as a fond memory. Both observed periods are connected by the theme of love, which underwent a fundamental development during the thirty years of the first half of the 20th century. The Renaissance thus appears in Czech surrealism as the force of erotic love transforming into Revolution. In the spring of 1921, Karel Teige published the program article Images and foreshadowing about the new art emerging after the First World War. His idea was to establish a creation that builds the Arcadia of the new socialist world. In this way, he reacted to the collapse of the ideals of the pre-war avant-gardes, which he assessed as mere superficial beauties. Teige verbalized the need for a renaissance, the need for a new reconfiguration of man, art and society. Heptameron thus aims to sensitively consider this "surrealist quattrocento" that followed.
The exhibition symbolically takes place on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the publication of the First Manifesto of the Surrealists, written by the representative of the French Surrealists, André Breton. At the same time, it is also the 60th anniversary for the audience of the never-opened Imaginative Art exhibition, prepared by Věra Linhartová and František Šmejkal in the Alšová South Bohemian Gallery. It was supposed to be the first evaluation of historical surrealism, but it was canceled for political reasons.
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