Anabaptist faience is the most important local phenomenon in the history of European ceramics. The holdings of the Moravian Gallery in Brno include a small collection of this pottery type (at present nearly 60 items). The start of this collection goes back to the early years after the founding of the Moravian Industrial Museum, the predecessor of today’s Museum of Applied Arts of the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Its core comprises items acquired by the museum as early as in the 19th century. Many of the later acquisitions were originally part of private collections, such as a set of pottery from the collector František Kretz. The oldest dated collection item is a tazza with a perforated rim, bearing a Dietrichstein emblem and the date 1607. With regards to form there is an obvious prevalence of flat ware. The archaeological excavations carried out in the 1950s by specialists from the Museum of Applied Arts in Vacenovice (Hodonín district) made a significant contribution to research into the manufacture of Anabaptist faience. The outcome of these activities was a large exhibition of Anabaptist faience at the end of 1955 and the start of 1956, accompanied by the publication of two catalogues (1955, 1961).

This paper focuses on the relation between the acquisition activity of the Moravian Gallery in Brno (officially founded in 1961) and the then current artistic production in the region (especially the program of the Brno House of Arts). While the collection of modern art — that originated before the official foundation of the gallery — was built in correlation with the current interwar exhibition activities of various art associations, in the 1960s the Gallery’s acquisition policy becomes selective. The reasons may be found in the diversification of modernity — personal preferences — political pressures — censorship — and/or the inability of the institution to deal with dematerialized art and newly emerging art forms. The text examines the position of the progressive trends of neo-avant-garde and conceptual art within the professional (institutionalized) art scene through specific examples of work, from the perspective of a significant Czech institution. Specifically, the essay deals with the works of art by Milan Grygar, Miroslav Sonny Halas and an informal group called ‘The Brno Bohemians.’ It also contains a brief excursus on a possible analogy between the authors of graphic scores in the Sixties and Seventies and the visuality of records and scores of Leoš Janáček, one of the most significant composers of the avant-garde.

The work is focused on identification of lead tin yellow types I and II, Naples yellow, and also on discrimination of a less common, distinct yellow pigment, the ternary Pb-Sb-Sn oxide. The knowledge about all those Pb-based yellows was in fact forgotten after introduction of modern synthetic yellows in 19th century. As late as in the last decade of the 20th century, the existence of Pb-Sb-Sn yellow and its production have been rediscovered, and only then it has been identified in colour layer of artworks. Pb-Sb-Sn yellow has recently been identified in colour layer of 17th century Italian paintings by Sandalinas and Ruiz-Moreno [C. Sandalinas, S. Ruiz-Moreno, Lead tin-antimony yellow, historical manufacture, molecular characterization and identification in seventeenth-century Italian paintings, Stud. Conserv. 49 (2003) 41–52], and here we report the finding of this pigment in Mid-European painting of the 18th and 19th centuries. Lead tin yellows, lead antimony yellow (Naples yellow), and lead antimony tin yellow were synthesized in laboratory following historical recipes, their colour was analyzed, and their structure was confirmed to provide a basis for their routine identification in microsamples of artworks by X-ray microdiffraction. Unequivocal identification of Pb-based yellows could help in authentication of traditional European paintings, because their use was temporally and also geographically specific. Combination of elemental microanalysis (X-ray fluorescence electron microanalysis) and X-ray powder microdiffraction were found very efficient in the microanalysis of colour layers of artworks with Pb-based yellows and their unequivocal identification.