Umelec Magazine since 1997 is the only art magazine devoted to current visual culture in the Czech Republic. It is directed to the international scene, particularly the wider European circle. Its emphasis on art in Central and Eastern Europe stems from its unique position in that region.

Because Umelec is published in two separate languages (Czech/Slovak and English), it has distributors, readers and contributors from all over the world.

The magazine reaches out towards other regions that have hitherto only received peripheral or insufficient attention. The sections that were originally limited to local regions are being transformed to international. The new sections' writing penetrates cultural areas with creative courage.

Umelec rejects lingering dominant apolitical approach to art. The magazine demonstrates how life and culture work together, and stands critically against tendencies to limit art to some safe place to which the public has limited access. Visual culture is always rendered accessible to the non-specialist, as a type of mental activity in which the individual always participates without merely consuming. The magazine relies on intelligent journalistic analyses in search of ways this subject can thrive.

Umelec doesn't follow trends, but reveals their own limits, and lays the groundwork for new ones. It leaves correct judgment of the world of others and with cool calm opens to a period of chaos and conflict, because it is only through them that an image can emerge from the innumerable channels of the expanding delta of today's visual culture.

Umelec magazine is supported by the Czech Ministry of Culture.

Language: German