Frantiska Blechová, Pohádková zahrádka / Fairytale garden

2014

this picture and the next two courtesy of Petr Řezáč

Biskupice is a village of less than 300 inhabitants in the district Třebíč (region Vysočina) in the Czech Republic.

Life and works 

One of its former inhabitants, Frantiska Blechová (1911-2001), has become known because from around 1970 on she transformed the garden in front of her house into a fairytale art environment.

Made from concrete some forty sculptures populate the garden. One can see musicians, gnomes, princes and princesses, all kinds of common people and all kinds of animals. such as giraffes, zebras, lions, frogs, elephants, all items colorful painted and provided with hats and/or attributes suited to the depicted personality.

Frantiska Blechová used to dress some of the sculptures with appropriate clothing, depending upon the season.

2014

Frantiska Blechová was born in Biskupice and after leaving school she worked in the fields. She got married, her husband was a mason, and the couple got some nine children. Around 1970, when she was around age sixty, she began creating the sculptures. 

She also decorated the facade and the interior walls of the house with large scale paintings and she designed and constructed the tombstone for her grave on the local graveyard. 

The picture above (September 2012) shows a detail of this creation, made in Blechová's own manner: a structure from all sorts of stones, decorated with angels and turtledoves and painted in bright white, ocher and purple colors. Meanwhile this tombstone has been replaced by one that is more common in the eyes of the bereaved.

The house has been sold

In 2013, a number of years after Frantiska Blechová died, the property has been sold. The new owner, Jan Bierhanzl, bought it with the intention to restore the sculptures

This has been done in the years 2014-2015 by the professional artist Aleš Novák (Academy of arts and crafts UMPRUM, Prague). 

After the renovation a group of friends of this art environment has repainted the sculptures in a naive style, according to Blechová's approach. The house itself also needs the construction of a water pipeline and other repairs, which are scheduled for the coming period.

picture by Pavel Konečný made during the re-opening

On may 14, 2016 the garden was officially and festively reopened.

Documentation
*  article (june 2018) in weblog Znalezienie
*  a photo galery  provided by Bub and Sekyt  with a large collection of pictures (from 2008 and 2009)
* on the Facebook page Outsider Art Environments Europe a series of pictures by Pavel Konečný made during the re-opening (may 14, 2016)

* account about Frantiska on Facebook
* Pavel Konečný & Šimon Kadlčák, Atlas spontánního umění (Atlas of spontaneous art), Prague, 2016 (ISBN 978-80-906599-1-9). p. 125-127

Videos
* Video by Znalezienie, 0.17", published on Facebook, June 2018

* Video by Pavel Konečný in the collection of Raw Vision (YouTube, April 2020, 8'04")

first published March 2013, last revised July 2020

Frantiska Blechová
Fairytale garden
Biskupice, district Třebíč, region Vysočina, Czech Republic
can be seen from the road