date: June 16 - December 31, 2018
venue: Puppet Museum in Pilsen

The exhibition Gustav Nosek - The Man in the Shadows aims to remind visitors of the important personality of Czech puppetry, which has been left behind for the rest of its life by its own work.

Although the puppets from Gustav Nosek's workshop are still known and admired by the audience not only in the Czech Republic, but also beyond the borders of our country, he has lived his life in humble, sometimes poor conditions. At the same time, he co-created the profile of several West Bohemian puppet theaters from World War I to the first years of normalization, both as a woodcarver and as a puppeteer.

His most famous work is undoubtedly Hurvínek, thanks to which Spejbl finally found his equal stage partner. The puppet Hurvínek, thanks to Noskov's ingenuity endowed with a number of technical "fugues", is a unique example of his inventive and sensitive approach to the carving of wooden actors. The thoroughness of the craft is also associated with extraordinary creative activity. During his lifetime, he made in his own words more than six hundred puppets (let's mention at least Mánička and the dog Žeryk), many of them equipped with original movement mechanisms.

The Man in the Shadow exhibition will present a fraction of Nosek's work structured according to his creative periods. The visitor will be able to get acquainted with the results of his carving skill from the First World War, the First Republic and then with puppets from the post-war period to the 1960s. The entire exhibition is thematically integrated into that part of the permanent exhibition in which Nosko's co-workers are introduced, placing them in a broader artistic-time context.

In connection with the exhibition Gustav Nosek - The Man in the Shade and the Skupa Pilsen Festival, puppets of Spejbl and Hurvínek from Moscow will be lent to the Puppet Museum in Pilsen. The original puppet duo was dedicated to Obrazcov's theater in Moscow in 1949 by Gustav Nosek himself, who, like Josef Skupa, was a screenwriter friend. Thus, Obrazcov's theater gained a rare artifact in the form of our two most famous puppets. However, the situation became much more interesting after extensive examination of documents and photographic materials, when it became apparent that Spejbl had been exchanged for another copy over the years.

This gives the loan of Spejbl and Hurvínek from Moscow a whole new dimension, because in this exhibition not only its authors, but also the general and professional public will try to find out the facts, where Spejbl from Moscow returned and where he is currently located. And which of many Spejbl actually arrives from Moscow to Pilsen.