Revelatio

Martin Souček and his publishing house Arbor vitae, founded at the beginning of the 1990s, became a significant phenomenon of our art scene.

His books have accompanied a long series of exhibitions in almost all Czech galleries, and many exhibition projects were initiated by him and derived from his publishing venture. Thanks to his collaboration with the most important graphic artists (Robert V. Novák, Adéla Svobodová, Tereza Hejmová, Jan Havel), he also became the most frequent winner of the Most Beautiful Book of the Year award among Czech publishers during this period. He literally lives for art and books, which are also two of his collecting interests. Over the years, he has amassed a remarkable collection that corresponds to the main trends of his publishing activity, with accents in Czech Symbolism, the art of German artists in Bohemia, or Art Brut, which is complemented by the works of a number of authors with whom he has collaborated on their monographs (Rudolf Dzurko, Miloslav Chlupáč, Jan and Eva Švankmajer, Jan Hísek, Marie Blabolilová, to name a few). A selection of Souček's collections was first presented on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in Cheb and then in Náchod, where his family originated and where the publishing house was founded. On that occasion, the collection is treated for the first time in a professional manner, as is the history of the publishing house Arbor vitae, which is intertwined with his personal biography and co-creates the cultural and historical context of Czech art of the last 30 years.