Since the ’60s, Czech artist Adriena Šimotová has been concerned with the human body-its physical presence, vulnerability, evanescence, and decay. She has worked primarily with paper since the early ’70s. I say with paper and not on it, for Šimotová uses paper as an almost sculptural medium, emphasizing its material qualities and, above all, its capacity to serve as a kind of physical allegory of human flesh.

This tightly organized retrospective prepared by the National Gallery in Prague and exhibited in the Veletrzní Palác leads off with, several paintings from 1970-73 in which Šimotová’s